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Title: The Cruise of the Snark

Author: Jack London

Release Date: March 26, 2000 [eBook #2512]
[Most recently updated: August 1, 2021]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: David Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRUISE OF THE SNARK ***




THE CRUISE OF THE
SNARK


BY
JACK LONDON

AUTHOR OF “VALLEY OF THE MOON,” “JOHN BARLEYCORN”
“MUTINY OF THE ELSINORE,” ETC.


“Yes have heard the beat of the offshore wind,
And the thresh of the deep-sea rain;
You have heard the song—how long! how long!
Pull out on the trail again!”


MILLS & BOON, LIMITED
49 RUPERT STREET
LONDON, W.1


_Copyright in the United States of America_ by The Macmillan Company


To
CHARMIAN
THE MATE OF THE “SNARK”
WHO TOOK THE WHEEL, NIGHT OR DAY,
WHEN ENTERING
OR LEAVING PORT OR RUNNING A PASSAGE,
WHO TOOK THE WHEEL IN EVERY EMERGENCY, AND
WHO WEPT
AFTER TWO YEARS OF SAILING, WHEN THE
VOYAGE WAS DISCONTINUED

Contents

  CHAPTER I FOREWORD
 CHAPTER II THE INCONCEIVABLE AND MONSTROUS
 CHAPTER III ADVENTURE
 CHAPTER IV FINDING ONE’S WAY ABOUT
 CHAPTER V THE FIRST LANDFALL
 CHAPTER VI A ROYAL SPORT
 CHAPTER VII THE LEPERS OF MOLOKAI
 CHAPTER VIII THE HOUSE OF THE SUN
 CHAPTER IX A PACIFIC TRAVERSE
 CHAPTER X TYPEE
 CHAPTER XI THE NATURE MAN
 CHAPTER XII THE HIGH SEAT OF ABUNDANCE
 CHAPTER XIII THE STONE-FISHING OF BORA BORA
 CHAPTER XIV THE AMATEUR NAVIGATOR
 CHAPTER XV CRUISING IN THE SOLOMONS
 CHAPTER XVI BÊCHE DE MER ENGLISH
 CHAPTER XVII THE AMATEUR M.D.
 BACKWORD
 FOOTNOTES




CHAPTER I
FOREWORD


It began in the swimming pool at Glen Ellen. Between swims it was our
wont to come out and lie in the sand and let our skins breathe the warm
air and soak in the sunshine. Roscoe was a yachtsman. I had followed
the sea a bit. It was inevitable that we should talk about boats. We
talked about small boats, and the seaworthiness of small boats. We
instanced Captain Slocum and his three years’ voyage around the world
in the _Spray_.

We asserted that we were not afraid to go around the world in a small
boat, say forty feet long. We asserted furthermore that we would like
to do it. We asserted finally that there was nothing in this world we’d
like better than a chance to do it.

“Let us do it,” we said . . . in fun.

Then I asked Charmian privily if she’d really care to do it, and she
said that it was too good to be true.

The next time we breathed our skins in the sand by the swimming pool I
said to Roscoe, “Let us do it.”

I was in earnest, and so was he, for he said:

“When shall we start?”

I had a house to build on the ranch, also an orchard, a vineyard, and
several hedges to plant, and a number of other things to do. We thought
we would start in four or five years. Then the lure of the adventure
began to grip us. Why not start at once? We’d never be younger, any of
us. Let the orchard, vineyard, and hedges be growing up while we were
away. When we came back, they would be ready for us, and we could live
in the barn while we built the house.

So the trip was decided upon, and the building of the _Snark_ began. We
named her the _Snark_ because we could not think of any other name—this
information is given for the benefit of those who otherwise might think
there is something occult in the name.

Our friends cannot understand why we make this voyage. They shudder,
and moan, and raise their hands. No amount of explanation can make them
comprehend that we are moving along the line of least resistance; that
it is easier for us to go down to the sea in a small ship than to
remain on dry land, just as it is easier for them to remain on dry land
than to go down to the sea in the small ship. This state of mind comes
of an undue prominence of the ego. They cannot get away from
themselves. They cannot come out of themselves long enough to see that
their line of least resistance is not necessarily everybody else’s line
of least resistance. They make of their own bundle of desires, likes,
and dislikes a yardstick wherewith to measure the desires, likes, and
dislikes of all creatures. This is unfair. I tell them so. But they
cannot get away from their own miserable egos long enough to hear me.
They think I am crazy. In return, I am sympathetic. It is a state of
mind familiar to me. We are all prone to think there is something wrong
with the mental processes of the man who disagrees with us.

The ultimate word is I LIKE. It lies beneath philosophy, and is twined
about the heart of life. When philosophy has maundered ponderously for
a month, telling the individual what he must do, the individual says,
in an instant, “I LIKE,” and does something else, and philosophy goes
glimmering. It is I LIKE that makes the drunkard drink and the martyr
wear a hair shirt; that makes one man a reveller and another man an
anchorite; that makes one man pursue fame, another gold, another love,
and another God. Philosophy is very often a man’s way of explaining his
own I LIKE.

But to return to the _Snark_, and why I, for one, want to journey in
her around the world. The things I like constitute my set of values.
The thing I like most of all is personal achievement—not achievement
for the world’s applause, but achievement for my own delight. It is the
old “I did it! I did it! With my own hands I did it!” But personal
achievement, with me, must be concrete. I’d rather win a water-fight in
the swimming pool, or remain astride a horse that is trying to get out
from under me, than write the great American novel. Each man to his
liking. Some other fellow would prefer writing the great American novel
to winning the water-fight or mastering the horse.

Possibly the proudest achievement of my life, my moment of highest
living, occurred when I was seventeen. I was in a three-masted schooner
off the coast of Japan. We were in a typhoon. All hands had been on
deck most of the night. I was called from my bunk at seven in the
morning to take the wheel. Not a stitch of canvas was set. We were
running before it under bare poles, yet the schooner fairly tore along.
The seas were all of an eighth of a mile apart, and the wind snatched
the whitecaps from their summits, filling. The air so thick with
driving spray that it was impossible to see more than two waves at a
time. The schooner was almost unmanageable, rolling her rail under to
starboard and to port, veering and yawing anywhere between south-east
and south-west, and threatening, when the huge seas lifted under her
quarter, to broach to. Had she broached to, she would ultimately have
been reported lost with all hands and no tidings.

I took the wheel. The sailing-master watched me for a space. He was
afraid of my youth, feared that I lacked the strength and the nerve.
But when he saw me successfully wrestle the schooner through several
bouts, he went below to breakfast. Fore and aft, all hands were below
at breakfast. Had she broached to, not one of them would ever have
reached the deck. For forty minutes I stood there alone at the wheel,
in my grasp the wildly careering schooner and the lives of twenty-two
men. Once we were pooped. I saw it coming, and, half-drowned, with tons
of water crushing me, I checked the schooner’s rush to broach to. At
the end of the hour, sweating and played out, I was relieved. But I had
done it! With my own hands I had done my trick at the wheel and guided
a hundred tons of wood and iron through a few million tons of wind and
waves.

My delight was in that I had done it—not in the fact that twenty-two
men knew I had done it. Within the year over half of them were dead and
gone, yet my pride in the thing performed was not diminished by half. I
am willing to confess, however, that I do like a small audience. But it
must be a very small audience, composed of those who love me and whom I
love. When I then accomplish personal achievement, I have a feeling
that I am justifying their love for me. But this is quite apart from
the delight of the achievement itself. This delight is peculiarly my
own and does not depend upon witnesses. When I have done some such
thing, I am exalted. I glow all over. I am aware of a pride in myself
that is mine, and mine alone. It is organic. Every fibre of me is
thrilling with it. It is very natural. It is a mere matter of
satisfaction at adjustment to environment. It is success.

Life that lives is life successful, and success is the breath of its
nostrils. The achievement of a difficult feat is successful adjustment
to a sternly exacting environment. The more difficult the feat, the
greater the satisfaction at its accomplishment. Thus it is with the man
who leaps forward from the springboard, out over the swimming pool, and
with a backward half-revolution of the body, enters the water head
first. Once he leaves the springboard his environment becomes
immediately savage, and savage the penalty it will exact should he fail
and strike the water flat. Of course, the man does not have to run the
risk of the penalty. He could remain on the bank in a sweet and placid
environment of summer air, sunshine, and stability. Only he is not made
that way. In that swift mid-air moment he lives as he could never live
on the bank.

As for myself, I’d rather be that man than the fellows who sit on the
bank and watch him. That is why I am building the _Snark_. I am so
made. I like, that is all. The trip around the world means big moments
of living. Bear with me a moment and look at it. Here am I, a little
animal called a man—a bit of vitalized matter, one hundred and
sixty-five pounds of meat and blood, nerve, sinew, bones, and
brain,—all of it soft and tender, susceptible to hurt, fallible, and
frail. I strike a light back-handed blow on the nose of an obstreperous
horse, and a bone in my hand is broken. I put my head under the water
for five minutes, and I am drowned. I fall twenty feet through the air,
and I am smashed. I am a creature of temperature. A few degrees one
way, and my fingers and ears and toes blacken and drop off. A few
degrees the other way, and my skin blisters and shrivels away from the
raw, quivering flesh. A few additional degrees either way, and the life
and the light in me go out. A drop of poison injected into my body from
a snake, and I cease to move—for ever I cease to move. A splinter of
lead from a rifle enters my head, and I am wrapped around in the
eternal blackness.

Fallible and frail, a bit of pulsating, jelly-like life—it is all I am.
About me are the great natural forces—colossal menaces, Titans of
destruction, unsentimental monsters that have less concern for me than
I have for the grain of sand I crush under my foot. They have no
concern at all for me. They do not know me. They are unconscious,
unmerciful, and unmoral. They are the cyclones and tornadoes, lightning
flashes and cloud-bursts, tide-rips and tidal waves, undertows and
waterspouts, great whirls and sucks and eddies, earthquakes and
volcanoes, surfs that thunder on rock-ribbed coasts and seas that leap
aboard the largest crafts that float, crushing humans to pulp or
licking them off into the sea and to death—and these insensate monsters
do not know that tiny sensitive creature, all nerves and weaknesses,
whom men call Jack London, and who himself thinks he is all right and
quite a superior being.

In the maze and chaos of the conflict of these vast and draughty
Titans, it is for me to thread my precarious way. The bit of life that
is I will exult over them. The bit of life that is I, in so far as it
succeeds in baffling them or in bitting them to its service, will
imagine that it is godlike. It is good to ride the tempest and feel
godlike. I dare to assert that for a finite speck of pulsating jelly to
feel godlike is a far more glorious feeling than for a god to feel
godlike.

Here is the sea, the wind, and the wave. Here are the seas, the winds,
and the waves of all the world. Here is ferocious environment. And here
is difficult adjustment, the achievement of which is delight to the
small quivering vanity that is I. I like. I am so made. It is my own
particular form of vanity, that is all.

There is also another side to the voyage of the _Snark_. Being alive, I
want to see, and all the world is a bigger thing to see than one small
town or valley. We have done little outlining of the voyage. Only one
thing is definite, and that is that our first port of call will be
Honolulu. Beyond a few general ideas, we have no thought of our next
port after Hawaii. We shall make up our minds as we get nearer, in a
general way we know that we shall wander through the South Seas, take
in Samoa, New Zealand, Tasmania, Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, and
Sumatra, and go on up through the Philippines to Japan. Then will come
Korea, China, India, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. After that the
voyage becomes too vague to describe, though we know a number of things
we shall surely do, and we expect to spend from one to several months
in every country in Europe.

The _Snark_ is to be sailed. There will be a gasolene engine on board,
but it will be used only in case of emergency, such as in bad water
among reefs and shoals, where a sudden calm in a swift current leaves a
sailing-boat helpless. The rig of the _Snark_ is to be what is called
the “ketch.” The ketch rig is a compromise between the yawl and the
schooner. Of late years the yawl rig has proved the best for cruising.
The ketch retains the cruising virtues of the yawl, and in addition
manages to embrace a few of the sailing virtues of the schooner. The
foregoing must be taken with a pinch of salt. It is all theory in my
head. I’ve never sailed a ketch, nor even seen one. The theory commends
itself to me. Wait till I get out on the ocean, then I’ll be able to
tell more about the cruising and sailing qualities of the ketch.

As originally planned, the _Snark_ was to be forty feet long on the
water-line. But we discovered there was no space for a bath-room, and
for that reason we have increased her length to forty-five feet. Her
greatest beam is fifteen feet. She has no house and no hold. There is
six feet of headroom, and the deck is unbroken save for two
companionways and a hatch for’ard. The fact that there is no house to
break the strength of the deck will make us feel safer in case great
seas thunder their tons of water down on board. A large and roomy
cockpit, sunk beneath the deck, with high rail and self-bailing, will
make our rough-weather days and nights more comfortable.

There will be no crew. Or, rather, Charmian, Roscoe, and I are the
crew. We are going to do the thing with our own hands. With our own
hands we’re going to circumnavigate the globe. Sail her or sink her,
with our own hands we’ll do it. Of course there will be a cook and a
cabin-boy. Why should we stew over a stove, wash dishes, and set the
table? We could stay on land if we wanted to do those things. Besides,
we’ve got to stand watch and work the ship. And also, I’ve got to work
at my trade of writing in order to feed us and to get new sails and
tackle and keep the _Snark_ in efficient working order. And then
there’s the ranch; I’ve got to keep the vineyard, orchard, and hedges
growing.

When we increased the length of the _Snark_ in order to get space for a
bath-room, we found that all the space was not required by the
bath-room. Because of this, we increased the size of the engine.
Seventy horse-power our engine is, and since we expect it to drive us
along at a nine-knot clip, we do not know the name of a river with a
current swift enough to defy us.

We expect to do a lot of inland work. The smallness of the _Snark_
makes this possible. When we enter the land, out go the masts and on
goes the engine. There are the canals of China, and the Yang-tse River.
We shall spend months on them if we can get permission from the
government. That will be the one obstacle to our inland
voyaging—governmental permission. But if we can get that permission,
there is scarcely a limit to the inland voyaging we can do.

When we come to the Nile, why we can go up the Nile. We can go up the
Danube to Vienna, up the Thames to London, and we can go up the Seine
to Paris and moor opposite the Latin Quarter with a bow-line out to
Notre Dame and a stern-line fast to the Morgue. We can leave the
Mediterranean and go up the Rhône to Lyons, there enter the Saône,
cross from the Saône to the Maine through the Canal de Bourgogne, and
from the Marne enter the Seine and go out the Seine at Havre. When we
cross the Atlantic to the United States, we can go up the Hudson, pass
through the Erie Canal, cross the Great Lakes, leave Lake Michigan at
Chicago, gain the Mississippi by way of the Illinois River and the
connecting canal, and go down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
And then there are the great rivers of South America. We’ll know
something about geography when we get back to California.

People that build houses are often sore perplexed; but if they enjoy
the strain of it, I’ll advise them to build a boat like the _Snark_.
Just consider, for a moment, the strain of detail. Take the engine.
What is the best kind of engine—the two cycle? three cycle? four cycle?
My lips are mutilated with all kinds of strange jargon, my mind is
mutilated with still stranger ideas and is foot-sore and weary from
travelling in new and rocky realms of thought.—Ignition methods; shall
it be make-and-break or jump-spark? Shall dry cells or storage
batteries be used? A storage battery commends itself, but it requires a
dynamo. How powerful a dynamo? And when we have installed a dynamo and
a storage battery, it is simply ridiculous not to light the boat with
electricity. Then comes the discussion of how many lights and how many
candle-power. It is a splendid idea. But electric lights will demand a
more powerful storage battery, which, in turn, demands a more powerful
dynamo.

And now that we’ve gone in for it, why not have a searchlight? It would
be tremendously useful. But the searchlight needs so much electricity
that when it runs it will put all the other lights out of commission.
Again we travel the weary road in the quest after more power for
storage battery and dynamo. And then, when it is finally solved, some
one asks, “What if the engine breaks down?” And we collapse. There are
the sidelights, the binnacle light, and the anchor light. Our very
lives depend upon them. So we have to fit the boat throughout with oil
lamps as well.

But we are not done with that engine yet. The engine is powerful. We
are two small men and a small woman. It will break our hearts and our
backs to hoist anchor by hand. Let the engine do it. And then comes the
problem of how to convey power for’ard from the engine to the winch.
And by the time all this is settled, we redistribute the allotments of
space to the engine-room, galley, bath-room, state-rooms, and cabin,
and begin all over again. And when we have shifted the engine, I send
off a telegram of gibberish to its makers at New York, something like
this: _Toggle-joint abandoned change thrust-bearing accordingly
distance from forward side of flywheel to face of stern post sixteen
feet six inches_.

Just potter around in quest of the best steering gear, or try to decide
whether you will set up your rigging with old-fashioned lanyards or
with turnbuckles, if you want strain of detail. Shall the binnacle be
located in front of the wheel in the centre of the beam, or shall it be
located to one side in front of the wheel?—there’s room right there for
a library of sea-dog controversy. Then there’s the problem of gasolene,
fifteen hundred gallons of it—what are the safest ways to tank it and
pipe it? and which is the best fire-extinguisher for a gasolene fire?
Then there is the pretty problem of the life-boat and the stowage of
the same. And when that is finished, come the cook and cabin-boy to
confront one with nightmare possibilities. It is a small boat, and
we’ll be packed close together. The servant-girl problem of landsmen
pales to insignificance. We did select one cabin-boy, and by that much
were our troubles eased. And then the cabin-boy fell in love and
resigned.

And in the meanwhile how is a fellow to find time to study
navigation—when he is divided between these problems and the earning of
the money wherewith to settle the problems? Neither Roscoe nor I know
anything about navigation, and the summer is gone, and we are about to
start, and the problems are thicker than ever, and the treasury is
stuffed with emptiness. Well, anyway, it takes years to learn
seamanship, and both of us are seamen. If we don’t find the time, we’ll
lay in the books and instruments and teach ourselves navigation on the
ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii.

There is one unfortunate and perplexing phase of the voyage of the
_Snark_. Roscoe, who is to be my co-navigator, is a follower of one,
Cyrus R. Teed. Now Cyrus R. Teed has a different cosmology from the one
generally accepted, and Roscoe shares his views. Wherefore Roscoe
believes that the surface of the earth is concave and that we live on
the inside of a hollow sphere. Thus, though we shall sail on the one
boat, the _Snark_, Roscoe will journey around the world on the inside,
while I shall journey around on the outside. But of this, more anon. We
threaten to be of the one mind before the voyage is completed. I am
confident that I shall convert him into making the journey on the
outside, while he is equally confident that before we arrive back in
San Francisco I shall be on the inside of the earth. How he is going to
get me through the crust I don’t know, but Roscoe is ay a masterful
man.


P.S.—That engine! While we’ve got it, and the dynamo, and the storage
battery, why not have an ice-machine? Ice in the tropics! It is more
necessary than bread. Here goes for the ice-machine! Now I am plunged
into chemistry, and my lips hurt, and my mind hurts, and how am I ever
to find the time to study navigation?




CHAPTER II
THE INCONCEIVABLE AND MONSTROUS


“Spare no money,” I said to Roscoe. “Let everything on the _Snark_ be
of the best. And never mind decoration. Plain pine boards is good
enough finishing for me. But put the money into the construction. Let
the _Snark_ be as staunch and strong as any boat afloat. Never mind
what it costs to make her staunch and strong; you see that she is made
staunch and strong, and I’ll go on writing and earning the money to pay
for it.”

And I did . . . as well as I could; for the _Snark_ ate up money faster
than I could earn it. In fact, every little while I had to borrow money
with which to supplement my earnings. Now I borrowed one thousand
dollars, now I borrowed two thousand dollars, and now I borrowed five
thousand dollars. And all the time I went on working every day and
sinking the earnings in the venture. I worked Sundays as well, and I
took no holidays. But it was worth it. Every time I thought of the
_Snark_ I knew she was worth it.

For know, gentle reader, the staunchness of the _Snark_. She is
forty-five feet long on the waterline. Her garboard strake is three
inches thick; her planking two and one-half inches thick; her
deck-planking two inches thick and in all her planking there are no
butts. I know, for I ordered that planking especially from Puget Sound.
Then the _Snark_ has four water-tight compartments, which is to say
that her length is broken by three water-tight bulkheads. Thus, no
matter how large a leak the _Snark_ may spring, Only one compartment
can fill with water. The other three compartments will keep her afloat,
anyway, and, besides, will enable us to mend the leak. There is another
virtue in these bulkheads. The last compartment of all, in the very
stern, contains six tanks that carry over one thousand gallons of
gasolene. Now gasolene is a very dangerous article to carry in bulk on
a small craft far out on the wide ocean. But when the six tanks that do
not leak are themselves contained in a compartment hermetically sealed
off from the rest of the boat, the danger will be seen to be very small
indeed.

The _Snark_ is a sail-boat. She was built primarily to sail. But
incidentally, as an auxiliary, a seventy-horse-power engine was
installed. This is a good, strong engine. I ought to know. I paid for
it to come out all the way from New York City. Then, on deck, above the
engine, is a windlass. It is a magnificent affair. It weighs several
hundred pounds and takes up no end of deck-room. You see, it is
ridiculous to hoist up anchor by hand-power when there is a
seventy-horse-power engine on board. So we installed the windlass,
transmitting power to it from the engine by means of a gear and
castings specially made in a San Francisco foundry.

The _Snark_ was made for comfort, and no expense was spared in this
regard. There is the bath-room, for instance, small and compact, it is
true, but containing all the conveniences of any bath-room upon land.
The bath-room is a beautiful dream of schemes and devices, pumps, and
levers, and sea-valves. Why, in the course of its building, I used to
lie awake nights thinking about that bath-room. And next to the
bath-room come the life-boat and the launch. They are carried on deck,
and they take up what little space might have been left us for
exercise. But then, they beat life insurance; and the prudent man, even
if he has built as staunch and strong a craft as the _Snark_, will see
to it that he has a good life-boat as well. And ours is a good one. It
is a dandy. It was stipulated to cost one hundred and fifty dollars,
and when I came to pay the bill, it turned out to be three hundred and
ninety-five dollars. That shows how good a life-boat it is.

I could go on at great length relating the various virtues and
excellences of the _Snark_, but I refrain. I have bragged enough as it
is, and I have bragged to a purpose, as will be seen before my tale is
ended. And please remember its title, “The Inconceivable and
Monstrous.” It was planned that the _Snark_ should sail on October 1,
1906. That she did not so sail was inconceivable and monstrous. There
was no valid reason for not sailing except that she was not ready to
sail, and there was no conceivable reason why she was not ready. She
was promised on November first, on November fifteenth, on December
first; and yet she was never ready. On December first Charmian and I
left the sweet, clean Sonoma country and came down to live in the
stifling city—but not for long, oh, no, only for two weeks, for we
would sail on December fifteenth. And I guess we ought to know, for
Roscoe said so, and it was on his advice that we came to the city to
stay two weeks. Alas, the two weeks went by, four weeks went by, six
weeks went by, eight weeks went by, and we were farther away from
sailing than ever. Explain it? Who?—me? I can’t. It is the one thing in
all my life that I have backed down on. There is no explaining it; if
there were, I’d do it. I, who am an artisan of speech, confess my
inability to explain why the _Snark_ was not ready. As I have said, and
as I must repeat, it was inconceivable and monstrous.

The eight weeks became sixteen weeks, and then, one day, Roscoe cheered
us up by saying: “If we don’t sail before April first, you can use my
head for a football.”

Two weeks later he said, “I’m getting my head in training for that
match.”

“Never mind,” Charmian and I said to each other; “think of the
wonderful boat it is going to be when it is completed.”

Whereat we would rehearse for our mutual encouragement the manifold
virtues and excellences of the _Snark_. Also, I would borrow more
money, and I would get down closer to my desk and write harder, and I
refused heroically to take a Sunday off and go out into the hills with
my friends. I was building a boat, and by the eternal it was going to
be a boat, and a boat spelled out all in capitals—B—O—A—T; and no
matter what it cost I didn’t care. So long as it was a B O A T.

And, oh, there is one other excellence of the _Snark_, upon which I
must brag, namely, her bow. No sea could ever come over it. It laughs
at the sea, that bow does; it challenges the sea; it snorts defiance at
the sea. And withal it is a beautiful bow; the lines of it are
dreamlike; I doubt if ever a boat was blessed with a more beautiful and
at the same time a more capable bow. It was made to punch storms. To
touch that bow is to rest one’s hand on the cosmic nose of things. To
look at it is to realize that expense cut no figure where it was
concerned. And every time our sailing was delayed, or a new expense was
tacked on, we thought of that wonderful bow and were content.

The _Snark_ is a small boat. When I figured seven thousand dollars as
her generous cost, I was both generous and correct. I have built barns
and houses, and I know the peculiar trait such things have of running
past their estimated cost. This knowledge was mine, was already mine,
when I estimated the probable cost of the building of the _Snark_ at
seven thousand dollars. Well, she cost thirty thousand. Now don’t ask
me, please. It is the truth. I signed the cheques and I raised the
money. Of course there is no explaining it, inconceivable and monstrous
is what it is, as you will agree, I know, ere my tale is done.

Then there was the matter of delay. I dealt with forty-seven different
kinds of union men and with one hundred and fifteen different firms.
And not one union man and not one firm of all the union men and all the
firms ever delivered anything at the time agreed upon, nor ever was on
time for anything except pay-day and bill-collection. Men pledged me
their immortal souls that they would deliver a certain thing on a
certain date; as a rule, after such pledging, they rarely exceeded
being three months late in delivery. And so it went, and Charmian and I
consoled each other by saying what a splendid boat the _Snark_ was, so
staunch and strong; also, we would get into the small boat and row
around the _Snark_, and gloat over her unbelievably wonderful bow.

“Think,” I would say to Charmian, “of a gale off the China coast, and
of the _Snark_ hove to, that splendid bow of hers driving into the
storm. Not a drop will come over that bow. She’ll be as dry as a
feather, and we’ll be all below playing whist while the gale howls.”

And Charmian would press my hand enthusiastically and exclaim: “It’s
worth every bit of it—the delay, and expense, and worry, and all the
rest. Oh, what a truly wonderful boat!”

Whenever I looked at the bow of the _Snark_ or thought of her
water-tight compartments, I was encouraged. Nobody else, however, was
encouraged. My friends began to make bets against the various sailing
dates of the _Snark_. Mr. Wiget, who was left behind in charge of our
Sonoma ranch was the first to cash his bet. He collected on New Year’s
Day, 1907. After that the bets came fast and furious. My friends
surrounded me like a gang of harpies, making bets against every sailing
date I set. I was rash, and I was stubborn. I bet, and I bet, and I
continued to bet; and I paid them all. Why, the women-kind of my
friends grew so brave that those among them who never bet before began
to bet with me. And I paid them, too.

“Never mind,” said Charmian to me; “just think of that bow and of being
hove to on the China Seas.”

“You see,” I said to my friends, when I paid the latest bunch of
wagers, “neither trouble nor cash is being spared in making the _Snark_
the most seaworthy craft that ever sailed out through the Golden
Gate—that is what causes all the delay.”

In the meantime editors and publishers with whom I had contracts
pestered me with demands for explanations. But how could I explain to
them, when I was unable to explain to myself, or when there was nobody,
not even Roscoe, to explain to me? The newspapers began to laugh at me,
and to publish rhymes anent the _Snark’s_ departure with refrains like,
“Not yet, but soon.” And Charmian cheered me up by reminding me of the
bow, and I went to a banker and borrowed five thousand more. There was
one recompense for the delay, however. A friend of mine, who happens to
be a critic, wrote a roast of me, of all I had done, and of all I ever
was going to do; and he planned to have it published after I was out on
the ocean. I was still on shore when it came out, and he has been busy
explaining ever since.

And the time continued to go by. One thing was becoming apparent,
namely, that it was impossible to finish the _Snark_ in San Francisco.
She had been so long in the building that she was beginning to break
down and wear out. In fact, she had reached the stage where she was
breaking down faster than she could be repaired. She had become a joke.
Nobody took her seriously; least of all the men who worked on her. I
said we would sail just as she was and finish building her in Honolulu.
Promptly she sprang a leak that had to be attended to before we could
sail. I started her for the boat-ways. Before she got to them she was
caught between two huge barges and received a vigorous crushing. We got
her on the ways, and, part way along, the ways spread and dropped her
through, stern-first, into the mud.

It was a pretty tangle, a job for wreckers, not boat-builders. There
are two high tides every twenty-four hours, and at every high tide,
night and day, for a week, there were two steam tugs pulling and
hauling on the _Snark_. There she was, stuck, fallen between the ways
and standing on her stern. Next, and while still in that predicament,
we started to use the gears and castings made in the local foundry
whereby power was conveyed from the engine to the windlass. It was the
first time we ever tried to use that windlass. The castings had flaws;
they shattered asunder, the gears ground together, and the windlass was
out of commission. Following upon that, the seventy-horse-power engine
went out of commission. This engine came from New York; so did its
bed-plate; there was a flaw in the bed-plate; there were a lot of flaws
in the bed-plate; and the seventy-horse-power engine broke away from
its shattered foundations, reared up in the air, smashed all
connections and fastenings, and fell over on its side. And the _Snark_
continued to stick between the spread ways, and the two tugs continued
to haul vainly upon her.

“Never mind,” said Charmian, “think of what a staunch, strong boat she
is.”

“Yes,” said I, “and of that beautiful bow.”

So we took heart and went at it again. The ruined engine was lashed
down on its rotten foundation; the smashed castings and cogs of the
power transmission were taken down and stored away—all for the purpose
of taking them to Honolulu where repairs and new castings could be
made. Somewhere in the dim past the _Snark_ had received on the outside
one coat of white paint. The intention of the colour was still evident,
however, when one got it in the right light. The _Snark_ had never
received any paint on the inside. On the contrary, she was coated
inches thick with the grease and tobacco-juice of the multitudinous
mechanics who had toiled upon her. Never mind, we said; the grease and
filth could be planed off, and later, when we fetched Honolulu, the
_Snark_ could be painted at the same time as she was being rebuilt.

By main strength and sweat we dragged the _Snark_ off from the wrecked
ways and laid her alongside the Oakland City Wharf. The drays brought
all the outfit from home, the books and blankets and personal luggage.
Along with this, everything else came on board in a torrent of
confusion—wood and coal, water and water-tanks, vegetables, provisions,
oil, the life-boat and the launch, all our friends, all the friends of
our friends and those who claimed to be their friends, to say nothing
of some of the friends of the friends of the friends of our crew. Also
there were reporters, and photographers, and strangers, and cranks, and
finally, and over all, clouds of coal-dust from the wharf.

We were to sail Sunday at eleven, and Saturday afternoon had arrived.
The crowd on the wharf and the coal-dust were thicker than ever. In one
pocket I carried a cheque-book, a fountain-pen, a dater, and a blotter;
in another pocket I carried between one and two thousand dollars in
paper money and gold. I was ready for the creditors, cash for the small
ones and cheques for the large ones, and was waiting only for Roscoe to
arrive with the balances of the accounts of the hundred and fifteen
firms who had delayed me so many months. And then—

And then the inconceivable and monstrous happened once more. Before
Roscoe could arrive there arrived another man. He was a United States
marshal. He tacked a notice on the _Snark’s_ brave mast so that all on
the wharf could read that the _Snark_ had been libelled for debt. The
marshal left a little old man in charge of the _Snark_, and himself
went away. I had no longer any control of the _Snark_, nor of her
wonderful bow. The little old man was now her lord and master, and I
learned that I was paying him three dollars a day for being lord and
master. Also, I learned the name of the man who had libelled the
_Snark_. It was Sellers; the debt was two hundred and thirty-two
dollars; and the deed was no more than was to be expected from the
possessor of such a name. Sellers! Ye gods! Sellers!

But who under the sun was Sellers? I looked in my cheque-book and saw
that two weeks before I had made him out a cheque for five hundred
dollars. Other cheque-books showed me that during the many months of
the building of the _Snark_ I had paid him several thousand dollars.
Then why in the name of common decency hadn’t he tried to collect his
miserable little balance instead of libelling the _Snark_? I thrust my
hands into my pockets, and in one pocket encountered the cheque-hook
and the dater and the pen, and in the other pocket the gold money and
the paper money. There was the wherewithal to settle his pitiful
account a few score of times and over—why hadn’t he given me a chance?
There was no explanation; it was merely the inconceivable and
monstrous.

To make the matter worse, the _Snark_ had been libelled late Saturday
afternoon; and though I sent lawyers and agents all over Oakland and
San Francisco, neither United States judge, nor United States marshal,
nor Mr. Sellers, nor Mr. Sellers’ attorney, nor anybody could be found.
They were all out of town for the weekend. And so the _Snark_ did not
sail Sunday morning at eleven. The little old man was still in charge,
and he said no. And Charmian and I walked out on an opposite wharf and
took consolation in the _Snark’s_ wonderful bow and thought of all the
gales and typhoons it would proudly punch.

“A bourgeois trick,” I said to Charmian, speaking of Mr. Sellers and
his libel; “a petty trader’s panic. But never mind; our troubles will
cease when once we are away from this and out on the wide ocean.”

And in the end we sailed away, on Tuesday morning, April 23, 1907. We
started rather lame, I confess. We had to hoist anchor by hand, because
the power transmission was a wreck. Also, what remained of our
seventy-horse-power engine was lashed down for ballast on the bottom of
the _Snark_. But what of such things? They could be fixed in Honolulu,
and in the meantime think of the magnificent rest of the boat! It is
true, the engine in the launch wouldn’t run, and the life-boat leaked
like a sieve; but then they weren’t the _Snark_; they were mere
appurtenances. The things that counted were the water-tight bulkheads,
the solid planking without butts, the bath-room devices—they were the
_Snark_. And then there was, greatest of all, that noble, wind-punching
bow.

We sailed out through the Golden Gate and set our course south toward
that part of the Pacific where we could hope to pick up with the
north-east trades. And right away things began to happen. I had
calculated that youth was the stuff for a voyage like that of the
_Snark_, and I had taken three youths—the engineer, the cook, and the
cabin-boy. My calculation was only two-thirds _off_; I had forgotten to
calculate on seasick youth, and I had two of them, the cook and the
cabin boy. They immediately took to their bunks, and that was the end
of their usefulness for a week to come. It will be understood, from the
foregoing, that we did not have the hot meals we might have had, nor
were things kept clean and orderly down below. But it did not matter
very much anyway, for we quickly discovered that our box of oranges had
at some time been frozen; that our box of apples was mushy and
spoiling; that the crate of cabbages, spoiled before it was ever
delivered to us, had to go overboard instanter; that kerosene had been
spilled on the carrots, and that the turnips were woody and the beets
rotten, while the kindling was dead wood that wouldn’t burn, and the
coal, delivered in rotten potato-sacks, had spilled all over the deck
and was washing through the scuppers.

But what did it matter? Such things were mere accessories. There was
the boat—she was all right, wasn’t she? I strolled along the deck and
in one minute counted fourteen butts in the beautiful planking ordered
specially from Puget Sound in order that there should be no butts in
it. Also, that deck leaked, and it leaked badly. It drowned Roscoe out
of his bunk and ruined the tools in the engine-room, to say nothing of
the provisions it ruined in the galley. Also, the sides of the _Snark_
leaked, and the bottom leaked, and we had to pump her every day to keep
her afloat. The floor of the galley is a couple of feet above the
inside bottom of the _Snark_; and yet I have stood on the floor of the
galley, trying to snatch a cold bite, and been wet to the knees by the
water churning around inside four hours after the last pumping.

Then those magnificent water-tight compartments that cost so much time
and money—well, they weren’t water-tight after all. The water moved
free as the air from one compartment to another; furthermore, a strong
smell of gasolene from the after compartment leads me to suspect that
some one or more of the half-dozen tanks there stored have sprung a
leak. The tanks leak, and they are not hermetically sealed in their
compartment. Then there was the bath-room with its pumps and levers and
sea-valves—it went out of commission inside the first twenty hours.
Powerful iron levers broke off short in one’s hand when one tried to
pump with them. The bath-room was the swiftest wreck of any portion of
the _Snark_.

And the iron-work on the _Snark_, no matter what its source, proved to
be mush. For instance, the bed-plate of the engine came from New York,
and it was mush; so were the casting and gears for the windlass that
came from San Francisco. And finally, there was the wrought iron used
in the rigging, that carried away in all directions when the first
strains were put upon it. Wrought iron, mind you, and it snapped like
macaroni.

A gooseneck on the gaff of the mainsail broke short off. We replaced it
with the gooseneck from the gaff of the storm trysail, and the second
gooseneck broke short off inside fifteen minutes of use, and, mind you,
it had been taken from the gaff of the storm trysail, upon which we
would have depended in time of storm. At the present moment the _Snark_
trails her mainsail like a broken wing, the gooseneck being replaced by
a rough lashing. We’ll see if we can get honest iron in Honolulu.

Man had betrayed us and sent us to sea in a sieve, but the Lord must
have loved us, for we had calm weather in which to learn that we must
pump every day in order to keep afloat, and that more trust could be
placed in a wooden toothpick than in the most massive piece of iron to
be found aboard. As the staunchness and the strength of the _Snark_
went glimmering, Charmian and I pinned our faith more and more to the
_Snark’s_ wonderful bow. There was nothing else left to pin to. It was
all inconceivable and monstrous, we knew, but that bow, at least, was
rational. And then, one evening, we started to heave to.

How shall I describe it? First of all, for the benefit of the tyro, let
me explain that heaving to is that sea manœuvre which, by means of
short and balanced canvas, compels a vessel to ride bow-on to wind and
sea. When the wind is too strong, or the sea is too high, a vessel of
the size of the _Snark_ can heave to with ease, whereupon there is no
more work to do on deck. Nobody needs to steer. The lookout is
superfluous. All hands can go below and sleep or play whist.

Well, it was blowing half of a small summer gale, when I told Roscoe
we’d heave to. Night was coming on. I had been steering nearly all day,
and all hands on deck (Roscoe and Bert and Charmian) were tired, while
all hands below were seasick. It happened that we had already put two
reefs in the big mainsail. The flying-jib and the jib were taken in,
and a reef put in the fore-staysail. The mizzen was also taken in.
About this time the flying jib-boom buried itself in a sea and broke
short off. I started to put the wheel down in order to heave to. The
_Snark_ at the moment was rolling in the trough. She continued rolling
in the trough. I put the spokes down harder and harder. She never
budged from the trough. (The trough, gentle reader, is the most
dangerous position all in which to lay a vessel.) I put the wheel hard
down, and still the _Snark_ rolled in the trough. Eight points was the
nearest I could get her to the wind. I had Roscoe and Bert come in on
the main-sheet. The _Snark_ rolled on in the trough, now putting her
rail under on one side and now under on the other side.

Again the inconceivable and monstrous was showing its grizzly head. It
was grotesque, impossible. I refused to believe it. Under double-reefed
mainsail and single-reefed staysail the _Snark_ refused to heave to. We
flattened the mainsail down. It did not alter the _Snark’s_ course a
tenth of a degree. We slacked the mainsail off with no more result. We
set a storm trysail on the mizzen, and took in the mainsail. No change.
The _Snark_ roiled on in the trough. That beautiful bow of hers refused
to come up and face the wind.

Next we took in the reefed staysail. Thus, the only bit of canvas left
on her was the storm trysail on the mizzen. If anything would bring her
bow up to the wind, that would. Maybe you won’t believe me when I say
it failed, but I do say it failed. And I say it failed because I saw it
fail, and not because I believe it failed. I don’t believe it did fail.
It is unbelievable, and I am not telling you what I believe; I am
telling you what I saw.

Now, gentle reader, what would you do if you were on a small boat,
rolling in the trough of the sea, a trysail on that small boat’s stern
that was unable to swing the bow up into the wind? Get out the
sea-anchor. It’s just what we did. We had a patent one, made to order
and warranted not to dive. Imagine a hoop of steel that serves to keep
open the mouth of a large, conical, canvas bag, and you have a
sea-anchor. Well, we made a line fast to the sea-anchor and to the bow
of the _Snark_, and then dropped the sea-anchor overboard. It promptly
dived. We had a tripping line on it, so we tripped the sea-anchor and
hauled it in. We attached a big timber as a float, and dropped the
sea-anchor over again. This time it floated. The line to the bow grew
taut. The trysail on the mizzen tended to swing the bow into the wind,
but, in spite of this tendency, the _Snark_ calmly took that sea-anchor
in her teeth, and went on ahead, dragging it after her, still in the
trough of the sea. And there you are. We even took in the trysail,
hoisted the full mizzen in its place, and hauled the full mizzen down
flat, and the _Snark_ wallowed in the trough and dragged the sea-anchor
behind her. Don’t believe me. I don’t believe it myself. I am merely
telling you what I saw.

Now I leave it to you. Who ever heard of a sailing-boat that wouldn’t
heave to?—that wouldn’t heave to with a sea-anchor to help it? Out of
my brief experience with boats I know I never did. And I stood on deck
and looked on the naked face of the inconceivable and monstrous—the
_Snark_ that wouldn’t heave to. A stormy night with broken moonlight
had come on. There was a splash of wet in the air, and up to windward
there was a promise of rain-squalls; and then there was the trough of
the sea, cold and cruel in the moonlight, in which the _Snark_
complacently rolled. And then we took in the sea-anchor and the mizzen,
hoisted the reefed staysail, ran the _Snark_ off before it, and went
below—not to the hot meal that should have awaited us, but to skate
across the slush and slime on the cabin floor, where cook and cabin-boy
lay like dead men in their bunks, and to lie down in our own bunks,
with our clothes on ready for a call, and to listen to the bilge-water
spouting knee-high on the galley floor.

In the Bohemian Club of San Francisco there are some crack sailors. I
know, because I heard them pass judgment on the _Snark_ during the
process of her building. They found only one vital thing the matter
with her, and on this they were all agreed, namely, that she could not
run. She was all right in every particular, they said, except that I’d
never be able to run her before it in a stiff wind and sea. “Her
lines,” they explained enigmatically, “it is the fault of her lines.
She simply cannot be made to run, that is all.” Well, I wish I’d only
had those crack sailors of the Bohemian Club on board the _Snark_ the
other night for them to see for themselves their one, vital, unanimous
judgment absolutely reversed. Run? It is the one thing the _Snark_ does
to perfection. Run? She ran with a sea-anchor fast for’ard and a full
mizzen flattened down aft. Run? At the present moment, as I write this,
we are bowling along before it, at a six-knot clip, in the north-east
trades. Quite a tidy bit of sea is running. There is nobody at the
wheel, the wheel is not even lashed and is set over a half-spoke
weather helm. To be precise, the wind is north-east; the _Snark’s_
mizzen is furled, her mainsail is over to starboard, her head-sheets
are hauled flat: and the _Snark’s_ course is south-south-west. And yet
there are men who have sailed the seas for forty years and who hold
that no boat can run before it without being steered. They’ll call me a
liar when they read this; it’s what they called Captain Slocum when he
said the same of his _Spray_.

As regards the future of the _Snark_ I’m all at sea. I don’t know. If I
had the money or the credit, I’d build another _Snark_ that _would_
heave to. But I am at the end of my resources. I’ve got to put up with
the present _Snark_ or quit—and I can’t quit. So I guess I’ll have to
try to get along with heaving the _Snark_ to stern first. I am waiting
for the next gale to see how it will work. I think it can be done. It
all depends on how her stern takes the seas. And who knows but that
some wild morning on the China Sea, some gray-beard skipper will stare,
rub his incredulous eyes and stare again, at the spectacle of a weird,
small craft very much like the _Snark_, hove to stern-first and riding
out the gale?

P.S. On my return to California after the voyage, I learned that the
_Snark_ was forty-three feet on the water-line instead of forty-five.
This was due to the fact that the builder was not on speaking terms
with the tape-line or two-foot rule.




CHAPTER III
ADVENTURE


No, adventure is not dead, and in spite of the steam engine and of
Thomas Cook & Son. When the announcement of the contemplated voyage of
the _Snark_ was made, young men of “roving disposition” proved to be
legion, and young women as well—to say nothing of the elderly men and
women who volunteered for the voyage. Why, among my personal friends
there were at least half a dozen who regretted their recent or imminent
marriages; and there was one marriage I know of that almost failed to
come off because of the _Snark_.


Every mail to me was burdened with the letters of applicants who were
suffocating in the “man-stifled towns,” and it soon dawned upon me that
a twentieth century Ulysses required a corps of stenographers to clear
his correspondence before setting sail. No, adventure is certainly not
dead—not while one receives letters that begin:

“There is no doubt that when you read this soul-plea from a female
stranger in New York City,” etc.; and wherein one learns, a little
farther on, that this female stranger weighs only ninety pounds, wants
to be cabin-boy, and “yearns to see the countries of the world.”

The possession of a “passionate fondness for geography,” was the way
one applicant expressed the wander-lust that was in him; while another
wrote, “I am cursed with an eternal yearning to be always on the move,
consequently this letter to you.” But best of all was the fellow who
said he wanted to come because his feet itched.

There were a few who wrote anonymously, suggesting names of friends and
giving said friends’ qualifications; but to me there was a hint of
something sinister in such proceedings, and I went no further in the
matter.

With two or three exceptions, all the hundreds that volunteered for my
crew were very much in earnest. Many of them sent their photographs.
Ninety per cent. offered to work in any capacity, and ninety-nine per
cent. offered to work without salary. “Contemplating your voyage on the
_Snark_,” said one, “and notwithstanding its attendant dangers, to
accompany you (in any capacity whatever) would be the climax of my
ambitions.” Which reminds me of the young fellow who was “seventeen
years old and ambicious,” and who, at the end of his letter, earnestly
requested “but please do not let this git into the papers or
magazines.” Quite different was the one who said, “I would be willing
to work like hell and not demand pay.” Almost all of them wanted me to
telegraph, at their expense, my acceptance of their services; and quite
a number offered to put up a bond to guarantee their appearance on
sailing date.

Some were rather vague in their own minds concerning the work to be
done on the _Snark_; as, for instance, the one who wrote: “I am taking
the liberty of writing you this note to find out if there would be any
possibility of my going with you as one of the crew of your boat to
make sketches and illustrations.” Several, unaware of the needful work
on a small craft like the _Snark_, offered to serve, as one of them
phrased it, “as assistant in filing materials collected for books and
novels.” That’s what one gets for being prolific.

“Let me give my qualifications for the job,” wrote one. “I am an orphan
living with my uncle, who is a hot revolutionary socialist and who says
a man without the red blood of adventure is an animated dish-rag.” Said
another: “I can swim some, though I don’t know any of the new strokes.
But what is more important than strokes, the water is a friend of
mine.” “If I was put alone in a sail-boat, I could get her anywhere I
wanted to go,” was the qualification of a third—and a better
qualification than the one that follows, “I have also watched the
fish-boats unload.” But possibly the prize should go to this one, who
very subtly conveys his deep knowledge of the world and life by saying:
“My age, in years, is twenty-two.”

Then there were the simple straight-out, homely, and unadorned letters
of young boys, lacking in the felicities of expression, it is true, but
desiring greatly to make the voyage. These were the hardest of all to
decline, and each time I declined one it seemed as if I had struck
Youth a slap in the face. They were so earnest, these boys, they wanted
so much to go. “I am sixteen but large for my age,” said one; and
another, “Seventeen but large and healthy.” “I am as strong at least as
the average boy of my size,” said an evident weakling. “Not afraid of
any kind of work,” was what many said, while one in particular, to lure
me no doubt by inexpensiveness, wrote: “I can pay my way to the Pacific
coast, so that part would probably be acceptable to you.” “Going around
the world is _the one thing_ I want to do,” said one, and it seemed to
be the one thing that a few hundred wanted to do. “I have no one who
cares whether I go or not,” was the pathetic note sounded by another.
One had sent his photograph, and speaking of it, said, “I’m a
homely-looking sort of a chap, but looks don’t always count.” And I am
confident that the lad who wrote the following would have turned out
all right: “My age is 19 years, but I am rather small and consequently
won’t take up much room, but I’m tough as the devil.” And there was one
thirteen-year-old applicant that Charmian and I fell in love with, and
it nearly broke our hearts to refuse him.

But it must not be imagined that most of my volunteers were boys; on
the contrary, boys constituted a very small proportion. There were men
and women from every walk in life. Physicians, surgeons, and dentists
offered in large numbers to come along, and, like all the professional
men, offered to come without pay, to serve in any capacity, and to pay,
even, for the privilege of so serving.

There was no end of compositors and reporters who wanted to come, to
say nothing of experienced valets, chefs, and stewards. Civil engineers
were keen on the voyage; “lady” companions galore cropped up for
Charmian; while I was deluged with the applications of would-be private
secretaries. Many high school and university students yearned for the
voyage, and every trade in the working class developed a few
applicants, the machinists, electricians, and engineers being
especially strong on the trip. I was surprised at the number, who, in
musty law offices, heard the call of adventure; and I was more than
surprised by the number of elderly and retired sea captains who were
still thralls to the sea. Several young fellows, with millions coming
to them later on, were wild for the adventure, as were also several
county superintendents of schools.

Fathers and sons wanted to come, and many men with their wives, to say
nothing of the young woman stenographer who wrote: “Write immediately
if you need me. I shall bring my typewriter on the first train.” But
the best of all is the following—observe the delicate way in which he
worked in his wife: “I thought I would drop you a line of inquiry as to
the possibility of making the trip with you, am 24 years of age,
married and broke, and a trip of that kind would be just what we are
looking for.”

Come to think of it, for the average man it must be fairly difficult to
write an honest letter of self-recommendation. One of my correspondents
was so stumped that he began his letter with the words, “This is a hard
task”; and, after vainly trying to describe his good points, he wound
up with, “It is a hard job writing about one’s self.” Nevertheless,
there was one who gave himself a most glowing and lengthy character,
and in conclusion stated that he had greatly enjoyed writing it.

“But suppose this: your cabin-boy could run your engine, could repair
it when out of order. Suppose he could take his turn at the wheel,
could do any carpenter or machinist work. Suppose he is strong,
healthy, and willing to work. Would you not rather have him than a kid
that gets seasick and can’t do anything but wash dishes?” It was
letters of this sort that I hated to decline. The writer of it,
self-taught in English, had been only two years in the United States,
and, as he said, “I am not wishing to go with you to earn my living,
but I wish to learn and see.” At the time of writing to me he was a
designer for one of the big motor manufacturing companies; he had been
to sea quite a bit, and had been used all his life to the handling of
small boats.

“I have a good position, but it matters not so with me as I prefer
travelling,” wrote another. “As to salary, look at me, and if I am
worth a dollar or two, all right, and if I am not, nothing said. As to
my honesty and character, I shall be pleased to show you my employers.
Never drink, no tobacco, but to be honest, I myself, after a little
more experience, want to do a little writing.”

“I can assure you that I am eminently respectable, but find other
respectable people tiresome.” The man who wrote the foregoing certainly
had me guessing, and I am still wondering whether or not he’d have
found me tiresome, or what the deuce he did mean.

“I have seen better days than what I am passing through to-day,” wrote
an old salt, “but I have seen them a great deal worse also.”

But the willingness to sacrifice on the part of the man who wrote the
following was so touching that I could not accept: “I have a father, a
mother, brothers and sisters, dear friends and a lucrative position,
and yet I will sacrifice all to become one of your crew.”

Another volunteer I could never have accepted was the finicky young
fellow who, to show me how necessary it was that I should give him a
chance, pointed out that “to go in the ordinary boat, be it schooner or
steamer, would be impracticable, for I would have to mix among and live
with the ordinary type of seamen, which as a rule is not a clean sort
of life.”

Then there was the young fellow of twenty-six, who had “run through the
gamut of human emotions,” and had “done everything from cooking to
attending Stanford University,” and who, at the present writing, was “A
vaquero on a fifty-five-thousand-acre range.” Quite in contrast was the
modesty of the one who said, “I am not aware of possessing any
particular qualities that would be likely to recommend me to your
consideration. But should you be impressed, you might consider it worth
a few minutes’ time to answer. Otherwise, there’s always work at the
trade. Not expecting, but hoping, I remain, etc.”

But I have held my head in both my hands ever since, trying to figure
out the intellectual kinship between myself and the one who wrote:
“Long before I knew of you, I had mixed political economy and history
and deducted therefrom many of your conclusions in concrete.”

Here, in its way, is one of the best, as it is the briefest, that I
received: “If any of the present company signed on for cruise happens
to get cold feet and you need one more who understands boating,
engines, etc., would like to hear from you, etc.” Here is another brief
one: “Point blank, would like to have the job of cabin-boy on your trip
around the world, or any other job on board. Am nineteen years old,
weigh one hundred and forty pounds, and am an American.”

And here is a good one from a man a “little over five feet long”: “When
I read about your manly plan of sailing around the world in a small
boat with Mrs. London, I was so much rejoiced that I felt I was
planning it myself, and I thought to write you about filling either
position of cook or cabin-boy myself, but for some reason I did not do
it, and I came to Denver from Oakland to join my friend’s business last
month, but everything is worse and unfavourable. But fortunately you
have postponed your departure on account of the great earthquake, so I
finally decided to propose you to let me fill either of the positions.
I am not very strong, being a man of a little over five feet long,
although I am of sound health and capability.”

“I think I can add to your outfit an additional method of utilizing the
power of the wind,” wrote a well-wisher, “which, while not interfering
with ordinary sails in light breezes, will enable you to use the whole
force of the wind in its mightiest blows, so that even when its force
is so great that you may have to take in every inch of canvas used in
the ordinary way, you may carry the fullest spread with my method. With
my attachment your craft could not be UPSET.”

The foregoing letter was written in San Francisco under the date of
April 16, 1906. And two days later, on April 18, came the Great
Earthquake. And that’s why I’ve got it in for that earthquake, for it
made a refugee out of the man who wrote the letter, and prevented us
from ever getting together.

Many of my brother socialists objected to my making the cruise, of
which the following is typical: “The Socialist Cause and the millions
of oppressed victims of Capitalism has a right and claim upon your life
and services. If, however, you persist, then, when you swallow the last
mouthful of salt chuck you can hold before sinking, remember that we at
least protested.”

One wanderer over the world who “could, if opportunity afforded,
recount many unusual scenes and events,” spent several pages ardently
trying to get to the point of his letter, and at last achieved the
following: “Still I am neglecting the point I set out to write you
about. So will say at once that it has been stated in print that you
and one or two others are going to take a cruize around the world a
little fifty- or sixty-foot boat. I therefore cannot get myself to
think that a man of your attainments and experience would attempt such
a proceeding, which is nothing less than courting death in that way.
And even if you were to escape for some time, your whole Person, and
those with you would be bruised from the ceaseless motion of a craft of
the above size, even if she were padded, a thing not usual at sea.”
Thank you, kind friend, thank you for that qualification, “a thing not
usual at sea.” Nor is this friend ignorant of the sea. As he says of
himself, “I am not a land-lubber, and I have sailed every sea and
ocean.” And he winds up his letter with: “Although not wishing to
offend, it would be madness to take any woman outside the bay even, in
such a craft.”

And yet, at the moment of writing this, Charmian is in her state-room
at the typewriter, Martin is cooking dinner, Tochigi is setting the
table, Roscoe and Bert are caulking the deck, and the _Snark_ is
steering herself some five knots an hour in a rattling good sea—and the
_Snark_ is not padded, either.

“Seeing a piece in the paper about your intended trip, would like to
know if you would like a good crew, as there is six of us boys all good
sailor men, with good discharges from the Navy and Merchant Service,
all true Americans, all between the ages of 20 and 22, and at present
are employed as riggers at the Union Iron Works, and would like very
much to sail with you.”—It was letters like this that made me regret
the boat was not larger.

And here writes the one woman in all the world—outside of Charmian—for
the cruise: “If you have not succeeded in getting a cook I would like
very much to take the trip in that capacity. I am a woman of fifty,
healthy and capable, and can do the work for the small company that
compose the crew of the _Snark_. I am a very good cook and a very good
sailor and something of a traveller, and the length of the voyage, if
of ten years’ duration, would suit me better than one. References,
etc.”

Some day, when I have made a lot of money, I’m going to build a big
ship, with room in it for a thousand volunteers. They will have to do
all the work of navigating that boat around the world, or they’ll stay
at home. I believe that they’ll work the boat around the world, for I
know that Adventure is not dead. I know Adventure is not dead because I
have had a long and intimate correspondence with Adventure.




CHAPTER IV
FINDING ONE’S WAY ABOUT


“But,” our friends objected, “how dare you go to sea without a
navigator on board? You’re not a navigator, are you?”

I had to confess that I was not a navigator, that I had never looked
through a sextant in my life, and that I doubted if I could tell a
sextant from a nautical almanac. And when they asked if Roscoe was a
navigator, I shook my head. Roscoe resented this. He had glanced at the
“Epitome,” bought for our voyage, knew how to use logarithm tables, had
seen a sextant at some time, and, what of this and of his seafaring
ancestry, he concluded that he did know navigation. But Roscoe was
wrong, I still insist. When a young boy he came from Maine to
California by way of the Isthmus of Panama, and that was the only time
in his life that he was out of sight of land. He had never gone to a
school of navigation, nor passed an examination in the same; nor had he
sailed the deep sea and learned the art from some other navigator. He
was a San Francisco Bay yachtsman, where land is always only several
miles away and the art of navigation is never employed.

So the _Snark_ started on her long voyage without a navigator. We beat
through the Golden Gate on April 23, and headed for the Hawaiian
Islands, twenty-one hundred sea-miles away as the gull flies. And the
outcome was our justification. We arrived. And we arrived, furthermore,
without any trouble, as you shall see; that is, without any trouble to
amount to anything. To begin with, Roscoe tackled the navigating. He
had the theory all right, but it was the first time he had ever applied
it, as was evidenced by the erratic behaviour of the _Snark_. Not but
what the _Snark_ was perfectly steady on the sea; the pranks she cut
were on the chart. On a day with a light breeze she would make a jump
on the chart that advertised “a wet sail and a flowing sheet,” and on a
day when she just raced over the ocean, she scarcely changed her
position on the chart. Now when one’s boat has logged six knots for
twenty-four consecutive hours, it is incontestable that she has covered
one hundred and forty-four miles of ocean. The ocean was all right, and
so was the patent log; as for speed, one saw it with his own eyes.
Therefore the thing that was not all right was the figuring that
refused to boost the _Snark_ along over the chart. Not that this
happened every day, but that it did happen. And it was perfectly proper
and no more than was to be expected from a first attempt at applying a
theory.

The acquisition of the knowledge of navigation has a strange effect on
the minds of men. The average navigator speaks of navigation with deep
respect. To the layman navigation is a deed and awful mystery, which
feeling has been generated in him by the deep and awful respect for
navigation that the layman has seen displayed by navigators. I have
known frank, ingenuous, and modest young men, open as the day, to learn
navigation and at once betray secretiveness, reserve, and
self-importance as if they had achieved some tremendous intellectual
attainment. The average navigator impresses the layman as a priest of
some holy rite. With bated breath, the amateur yachtsman navigator
invites one in to look at his chronometer. And so it was that our
friends suffered such apprehension at our sailing without a navigator.

During the building of the _Snark_, Roscoe and I had an agreement,
something like this: “I’ll furnish the books and instruments,” I said,
“and do you study up navigation now. I’ll be too busy to do any
studying. Then, when we get to sea, you can teach me what you have
learned.” Roscoe was delighted. Furthermore, Roscoe was as frank and
ingenuous and modest as the young men I have described. But when we got
out to sea and he began to practise the holy rite, while I looked on
admiringly, a change, subtle and distinctive, marked his bearing. When
he shot the sun at noon, the glow of achievement wrapped him in lambent
flame. When he went below, figured out his observation, and then
returned on deck and announced our latitude and longitude, there was an
authoritative ring in his voice that was new to all of us. But that was
not the worst of it. He became filled with incommunicable information.
And the more he discovered the reasons for the erratic jumps of the
_Snark_ over the chart, and the less the _Snark_ jumped, the more
incommunicable and holy and awful became his information. My mild
suggestions that it was about time that I began to learn, met with no
hearty response, with no offers on his part to help me. He displayed
not the slightest intention of living up to our agreement.

Now this was not Roscoe’s fault; he could not help it. He had merely
gone the way of all the men who learned navigation before him. By an
understandable and forgivable confusion of values, plus a loss of
orientation, he felt weighted by responsibility, and experienced the
possession of power that was like unto that of a god. All his life
Roscoe had lived on land, and therefore in sight of land. Being
constantly in sight of land, with landmarks to guide him, he had
managed, with occasional difficulties, to steer his body around and
about the earth. Now he found himself on the sea, wide-stretching,
bounded only by the eternal circle of the sky. This circle looked
always the same. There were no landmarks. The sun rose to the east and
set to the west and the stars wheeled through the night. But who may
look at the sun or the stars and say, “My place on the face of the
earth at the present moment is four and three-quarter miles to the west
of Jones’s Cash Store of Smithersville”? or “I know where I am now, for
the Little Dipper informs me that Boston is three miles away on the
second turning to the right”? And yet that was precisely what Roscoe
did. That he was astounded by the achievement, is putting it mildly. He
stood in reverential awe of himself; he had performed a miraculous
feat. The act of finding himself on the face of the waters became a
rite, and he felt himself a superior being to the rest of us who knew
not this rite and were dependent on him for being shepherded across the
heaving and limitless waste, the briny highroad that connects the
continents and whereon there are no mile-stones. So, with the sextant
he made obeisance to the sun-god, he consulted ancient tomes and tables
of magic characters, muttered prayers in a strange tongue that sounded
like _Indexerrorparallaxrefraction_, made cabalistic signs on paper,
added and carried one, and then, on a piece of holy script called the
Grail—I mean the Chart—he placed his finger on a certain space
conspicuous for its blankness and said, “Here we are.” When we looked
at the blank space and asked, “And where is that?” he answered in the
cipher-code of the higher priesthood, “31-15-47 north, 133-5-30 west.”
And we said “Oh,” and felt mighty small.

So I aver, it was not Roscoe’s fault. He was like unto a god, and he
carried us in the hollow of his hand across the blank spaces on the
chart. I experienced a great respect for Roscoe; this respect grew so
profound that had he commanded, “Kneel down and worship me,” I know
that I should have flopped down on the deck and yammered. But, one day,
there came a still small thought to me that said: “This is not a god;
this is Roscoe, a mere man like myself. What he has done, I can do. Who
taught him? Himself. Go you and do likewise—be your own teacher.” And
right there Roscoe crashed, and he was high priest of the _Snark_ no
longer. I invaded the sanctuary and demanded the ancient tomes and
magic tables, also the prayer-wheel—the sextant, I mean.

And now, in simple language. I shall describe how I taught myself
navigation. One whole afternoon I sat in the cockpit, steering with one
hand and studying logarithms with the other. Two afternoons, two hours
each, I studied the general theory of navigation and the particular
process of taking a meridian altitude. Then I took the sextant, worked
out the index error, and shot the sun. The figuring from the data of
this observation was child’s play. In the “Epitome” and the “Nautical
Almanac” were scores of cunning tables, all worked out by
mathematicians and astronomers. It was like using interest tables and
lightning-calculator tables such as you all know. The mystery was
mystery no longer. I put my finger on the chart and announced that that
was where we were. I was right too, or at least I was as right as
Roscoe, who selected a spot a quarter of a mile away from mine. Even he
was willing to split the distance with me. I had exploded the mystery,
and yet, such was the miracle of it, I was conscious of new power in
me, and I felt the thrill and tickle of pride. And when Martin asked
me, in the same humble and respectful way I had previously asked
Roscoe, as to where we were, it was with exaltation and spiritual
chest-throwing that I answered in the cipher-code of the higher
priesthood and heard Martin’s self-abasing and worshipful “Oh.” As for
Charmian, I felt that in a new way I had proved my right to her; and I
was aware of another feeling, namely, that she was a most fortunate
woman to have a man like me.

I couldn’t help it. I tell it as a vindication of Roscoe and all the
other navigators. The poison of power was working in me. I was not as
other men—most other men; I knew what they did not know,—the mystery of
the heavens, that pointed out the way across the deep. And the taste of
power I had received drove me on. I steered at the wheel long hours
with one hand, and studied mystery with the other. By the end of the
week, teaching myself, I was able to do divers things. For instance, I
shot the North Star, at night, of course; got its altitude, corrected
for index error, dip, etc., and found our latitude. And this latitude
agreed with the latitude of the previous noon corrected by dead
reckoning up to that moment. Proud? Well, I was even prouder with my
next miracle. I was going to turn in at nine o’clock. I worked out the
problem, self-instructed, and learned what star of the first magnitude
would be passing the meridian around half-past eight. This star proved
to be Alpha Crucis. I had never heard of the star before. I looked it
up on the star map. It was one of the stars of the Southern Cross.
What! thought I; have we been sailing with the Southern Cross in the
sky of nights and never known it? Dolts that we are! Gudgeons and
moles! I couldn’t believe it. I went over the problem again, and
verified it. Charmian had the wheel from eight till ten that evening. I
told her to keep her eyes open and look due south for the Southern
Cross. And when the stars came out, there shone the Southern Cross low
on the horizon. Proud? No medicine man nor high priest was ever
prouder. Furthermore, with the prayer-wheel I shot Alpha Crucis and
from its altitude worked out our latitude. And still furthermore, I
shot the North Star, too, and it agreed with what had been told me by
the Southern Cross. Proud? Why, the language of the stars was mine, and
I listened and heard them telling me my way over the deep.

Proud? I was a worker of miracles. I forgot how easily I had taught
myself from the printed page. I forgot that all the work (and a
tremendous work, too) had been done by the masterminds before me, the
astronomers and mathematicians, who had discovered and elaborated the
whole science of navigation and made the tables in the “Epitome.” I
remembered only the everlasting miracle of it—that I had listened to
the voices of the stars and been told my place upon the highway of the
sea. Charmian did not know, Martin did not know, Tochigi, the
cabin-boy, did not know. But I told them. I was God’s messenger. I
stood between them and infinity. I translated the high celestial speech
into terms of their ordinary understanding. We were heaven-directed,
and it was I who could read the sign-post of the sky!—I! I!

And now, in a cooler moment, I hasten to blab the whole simplicity of
it, to blab on Roscoe and the other navigators and the rest of the
priesthood, all for fear that I may become even as they, secretive,
immodest, and inflated with self-esteem. And I want to say this now:
any young fellow with ordinary gray matter, ordinary education, and
with the slightest trace of the student-mind, can get the books, and
charts, and instruments and teach himself navigation. Now I must not be
misunderstood. Seamanship is an entirely different matter. It is not
learned in a day, nor in many days; it requires years. Also, navigating
by dead reckoning requires long study and practice. But navigating by
observations of the sun, moon, and stars, thanks to the astronomers and
mathematicians, is child’s play. Any average young fellow can teach
himself in a week. And yet again I must not be misunderstood. I do not
mean to say that at the end of a week a young fellow could take charge
of a fifteen-thousand-ton steamer, driving twenty knots an hour through
the brine, racing from land to land, fair weather and foul, clear sky
or cloudy, steering by degrees on the compass card and making landfalls
with most amazing precision. But what I do mean is just this: the
average young fellow I have described can get into a staunch sail-boat
and put out across the ocean, without knowing anything about
navigation, and at the end of the week he will know enough to know
where he is on the chart. He will be able to take a meridian
observation with fair accuracy, and from that observation, with ten
minutes of figuring, work out his latitude and longitude. And, carrying
neither freight nor passengers, being under no press to reach his
destination, he can jog comfortably along, and if at any time he doubts
his own navigation and fears an imminent landfall, he can heave to all
night and proceed in the morning.

Joshua Slocum sailed around the world a few years ago in a
thirty-seven-foot boat all by himself. I shall never forget, in his
narrative of the voyage, where he heartily indorsed the idea of young
men, in similar small boats, making similar voyage. I promptly indorsed
his idea, and so heartily that I took my wife along. While it certainly
makes a Cook’s tour look like thirty cents, on top of that, amid on top
of the fun and pleasure, it is a splendid education for a young man—oh,
not a mere education in the things of the world outside, of lands, and
peoples, and climates, but an education in the world inside, an
education in one’s self, a chance to learn one’s own self, to get on
speaking terms with one’s soul. Then there is the training and the
disciplining of it. First, naturally, the young fellow will learn his
limitations; and next, inevitably, he will proceed to press back those
limitations. And he cannot escape returning from such a voyage a bigger
and better man. And as for sport, it is a king’s sport, taking one’s
self around the world, doing it with one’s own hands, depending on no
one but one’s self, and at the end, back at the starting-point,
contemplating with inner vision the planet rushing through space, and
saying, “I did it; with my own hands I did it. I went clear around that
whirling sphere, and I can travel alone, without any nurse of a
sea-captain to guide my steps across the seas. I may not fly to other
stars, but of this star I myself am master.”

As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward. I am on the
beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu. Far, in the azure sky, the
trade-wind clouds drift low over the blue-green turquoise of the deep
sea. Nearer, the sea is emerald and light olive-green. Then comes the
reef, where the water is all slaty purple flecked with red. Still
nearer are brighter greens and tans, lying in alternate stripes and
showing where sandbeds lie between the living coral banks. Through and
over and out of these wonderful colours tumbles and thunders a
magnificent surf. As I say, I lift my eyes to all this, and through the
white crest of a breaker suddenly appears a dark figure, erect, a
man-fish or a sea-god, on the very forward face of the crest where the
top falls over and down, driving in toward shore, buried to his loins
in smoking spray, caught up by the sea and flung landward, bodily, a
quarter of a mile. It is a Kanaka on a surf-board. And I know that when
I have finished these lines I shall be out in that riot of colour and
pounding surf, trying to bit those breakers even as he, and failing as
he never failed, but living life as the best of us may live it. And the
picture of that coloured sea and that flying sea-god Kanaka becomes
another reason for the young man to go west, and farther west, beyond
the Baths of Sunset, and still west till he arrives home again.

But to return. Please do not think that I already know it all. I know
only the rudiments of navigation. There is a vast deal yet for me to
learn. On the _Snark_ there is a score of fascinating books on
navigation waiting for me. There is the danger-angle of Lecky, there is
the line of Sumner, which, when you know least of all where you are,
shows most conclusively where you are, and where you are not. There are
dozens and dozens of methods of finding one’s location on the deep, and
one can work years before he masters it all in all its fineness.

Even in the little we did learn there were slips that accounted for the
apparently antic behaviour of the _Snark_. On Thursday, May 16, for
instance, the trade wind failed us. During the twenty-four hours that
ended Friday at noon, by dead reckoning we had not sailed twenty miles.
Yet here are our positions, at noon, for the two days, worked out from
our observations:
Thursday
20°
57′
9″
N

152°
40′
30″
W
Friday
21°
15′
33″
N

154°
12′



The difference between the two positions was something like eighty
miles. Yet we knew we had not travelled twenty miles. Now our figuring
was all right. We went over it several times. What was wrong was the
observations we had taken. To take a correct observation requires
practice and skill, and especially so on a small craft like the
_Snark_. The violently moving boat and the closeness of the observer’s
eye to the surface of the water are to blame. A big wave that lifts up
a mile off is liable to steal the horizon away.

But in our particular case there was another perturbing factor. The
sun, in its annual march north through the heavens, was increasing its
declination. On the 19th parallel of north latitude in the middle of
May the sun is nearly overhead. The angle of arc was between
eighty-eight and eighty-nine degrees. Had it been ninety degrees it
would have been straight overhead. It was on another day that we
learned a few things about taking the altitude of the almost
perpendicular sun. Roscoe started in drawing the sun down to the
eastern horizon, and he stayed by that point of the compass despite the
fact that the sun would pass the meridian to the south. I, on the other
hand, started in to draw the sun down to south-east and strayed away to
the south-west. You see, we were teaching ourselves. As a result, at
twenty-five minutes past twelve by the ship’s time, I called twelve
o’clock by the sun. Now this signified that we had changed our location
on the face of the world by twenty-five minutes, which was equal to
something like six degrees of longitude, or three hundred and fifty
miles. This showed the _Snark_ had travelled fifteen knots per hour for
twenty-four consecutive hours—and we had never noticed it! It was
absurd and grotesque. But Roscoe, still looking east, averred that it
was not yet twelve o’clock. He was bent on giving us a twenty-knot
clip. Then we began to train our sextants rather wildly all around the
horizon, and wherever we looked, there was the sun, puzzlingly close to
the sky-line, sometimes above it and sometimes below it. In one
direction the sun was proclaiming morning, in another direction it was
proclaiming afternoon. The sun was all right—we knew that; therefore we
were all wrong. And the rest of the afternoon we spent in the cockpit
reading up the matter in the books and finding out what was wrong. We
missed the observation that day, but we didn’t the next. We had
learned.

And we learned well, better than for a while we thought we had. At the
beginning of the second dog-watch one evening, Charmian and I sat down
on the forecastle-head for a rubber of cribbage. Chancing to glance
ahead, I saw cloud-capped mountains rising from the sea. We were
rejoiced at the sight of land, but I was in despair over our
navigation. I thought we had learned something, yet our position at
noon, plus what we had run since, did not put us within a hundred miles
of land. But there was the land, fading away before our eyes in the
fires of sunset. The land was all right. There was no disputing it.
Therefore our navigation was all wrong. But it wasn’t. That land we saw
was the summit of Haleakala, the House of the Sun, the greatest extinct
volcano in the world. It towered ten thousand feet above the sea, and
it was all of a hundred miles away. We sailed all night at a seven-knot
clip, and in the morning the House of the Sun was still before us, and
it took a few more hours of sailing to bring it abreast of us. “That
island is Maui,” we said, verifying by the chart. “That next island
sticking out is Molokai, where the lepers are. And the island next to
that is Oahu. There is Makapuu Head now. We’ll be in Honolulu
to-morrow. Our navigation is all right.”




CHAPTER V
THE FIRST LANDFALL


“It will not be so monotonous at sea,” I promised my fellow-voyagers on
the _Snark_. “The sea is filled with life. It is so populous that every
day something new is happening. Almost as soon as we pass through the
Golden Gate and head south we’ll pick up with the flying fish. We’ll be
having them fried for breakfast. We’ll be catching bonita and dolphin,
and spearing porpoises from the bowsprit. And then there are the
sharks—sharks without end.”

We passed through the Golden Gate and headed south. We dropped the
mountains of California beneath the horizon, and daily the surf grew
warmer. But there were no flying fish, no bonita and dolphin. The ocean
was bereft of life. Never had I sailed on so forsaken a sea. Always,
before, in the same latitudes, had I encountered flying fish.

“Never mind,” I said. “Wait till we get off the coast of Southern
California. Then we’ll pick up the flying fish.”

We came abreast of Southern California, abreast of the Peninsula of
Lower California, abreast of the coast of Mexico; and there were no
flying fish. Nor was there anything else. No life moved. As the days
went by the absence of life became almost uncanny.

“Never mind,” I said. “When we do pick up with the flying fish we’ll
pick up with everything else. The flying fish is the staff of life for
all the other breeds. Everything will come in a bunch when we find the
flying fish.”

When I should have headed the _Snark_ south-west for Hawaii, I still
held her south. I was going to find those flying fish. Finally the time
came when, if I wanted to go to Honolulu, I should have headed the
_Snark_ due west, instead of which I kept her south. Not until latitude
19° did we encounter the first flying fish. He was very much alone. I
saw him. Five other pairs of eager eyes scanned the sea all day, but
never saw another. So sparse were the flying fish that nearly a week
more elapsed before the last one on board saw his first flying fish. As
for the dolphin, bonita, porpoise, and all the other hordes of
life—there weren’t any.

Not even a shark broke surface with his ominous dorsal fin. Bert took a
dip daily under the bowsprit, hanging on to the stays and dragging his
body through the water. And daily he canvassed the project of letting
go and having a decent swim. I did my best to dissuade him. But with
him I had lost all standing as an authority on sea life.

“If there are sharks,” he demanded, “why don’t they show up?”

I assured him that if he really did let go and have a swim the sharks
would promptly appear. This was a bluff on my part. I didn’t believe
it. It lasted as a deterrent for two days. The third day the wind fell
calm, and it was pretty hot. The _Snark_ was moving a knot an hour.
Bert dropped down under the bowsprit and let go. And now behold the
perversity of things. We had sailed across two thousand miles and more
of ocean and had met with no sharks. Within five minutes after Bert
finished his swim, the fin of a shark was cutting the surface in
circles around the _Snark_.

There was something wrong about that shark. It bothered me. It had no
right to be there in that deserted ocean. The more I thought about it,
the more incomprehensible it became. But two hours later we sighted
land and the mystery was cleared up. He had come to us from the land,
and not from the uninhabited deep. He had presaged the landfall. He was
the messenger of the land.

Twenty-seven days out from San Francisco we arrived at the island of
Oahu, Territory of Hawaii. In the early morning we drifted around
Diamond Head into full view of Honolulu; and then the ocean burst
suddenly into life. Flying fish cleaved the air in glittering
squadrons. In five minutes we saw more of them than during the whole
voyage. Other fish, large ones, of various sorts, leaped into the air.
There was life everywhere, on sea and shore. We could see the masts and
funnels of the shipping in the harbour, the hotels and bathers along
the beach at Waikiki, the smoke rising from the dwelling-houses high up
on the volcanic slopes of the Punch Bowl and Tantalus. The custom-house
tug was racing toward us and a big school of porpoises got under our
bow and began cutting the most ridiculous capers. The port doctor’s
launch came charging out at us, and a big sea turtle broke the surface
with his back and took a look at us. Never was there such a burgeoning
of life. Strange faces were on our decks, strange voices were speaking,
and copies of that very morning’s newspaper, with cable reports from
all the world, were thrust before our eyes. Incidentally, we read that
the _Snark_ and all hands had been lost at sea, and that she had been a
very unseaworthy craft anyway. And while we read this information a
wireless message was being received by the congressional party on the
summit of Haleakala announcing the safe arrival of the _Snark_.

It was the _Snark’s_ first landfall—and such a landfall! For
twenty-seven days we had been on the deserted deep, and it was pretty
hard to realize that there was so much life in the world. We were made
dizzy by it. We could not take it all in at once. We were like awakened
Rip Van Winkles, and it seemed to us that we were dreaming. On one side
the azure sea lapped across the horizon into the azure sky; on the
other side the sea lifted itself into great breakers of emerald that
fell in a snowy smother upon a white coral beach. Beyond the beach,
green plantations of sugar-cane undulated gently upward to steeper
slopes, which, in turn, became jagged volcanic crests, drenched with
tropic showers and capped by stupendous masses of trade-wind clouds. At
any rate, it was a most beautiful dream. The _Snark_ turned and headed
directly in toward the emerald surf, till it lifted and thundered on
either hand; and on either hand, scarce a biscuit-toss away, the reef
showed its long teeth, pale green and menacing.

Abruptly the land itself, in a riot of olive-greens of a thousand hues,
reached out its arms and folded the _Snark_ in. There was no perilous
passage through the reef, no emerald surf and azure sea—nothing but a
warm soft land, a motionless lagoon, and tiny beaches on which swam
dark-skinned tropic children. The sea had disappeared. The _Snark’s_
anchor rumbled the chain through the hawse-pipe, and we lay without
movement on a “lineless, level floor.” It was all so beautiful and
strange that we could not accept it as real. On the chart this place
was called Pearl Harbour, but we called it Dream Harbour.

A launch came off to us; in it were members of the Hawaiian Yacht Club,
come to greet us and make us welcome, with true Hawaiian hospitality,
to all they had. They were ordinary men, flesh and blood and all the
rest; but they did not tend to break our dreaming. Our last memories of
men were of United States marshals and of panicky little merchants with
rusty dollars for souls, who, in a reeking atmosphere of soot and
coal-dust, laid grimy hands upon the _Snark_ and held her back from her
world adventure. But these men who came to meet us were clean men. A
healthy tan was on their cheeks, and their eyes were not dazzled and
bespectacled from gazing overmuch at glittering dollar-heaps. No, they
merely verified the dream. They clinched it with their unsmirched
souls.

So we went ashore with them across a level flashing sea to the
wonderful green land. We landed on a tiny wharf, and the dream became
more insistent; for know that for twenty-seven days we had been rocking
across the ocean on the tiny _Snark_. Not once in all those
twenty-seven days had we known a moment’s rest, a moment’s cessation
from movement. This ceaseless movement had become ingrained. Body and
brain we had rocked and rolled so long that when we climbed out on the
tiny wharf kept on rocking and rolling. This, naturally, we attributed
to the wharf. It was projected psychology. I spraddled along the wharf
and nearly fell into the water. I glanced at Charmian, and the way she
walked made me sad. The wharf had all the seeming of a ship’s deck. It
lifted, tilted, heaved and sank; and since there were no handrails on
it, it kept Charmian and me busy avoiding falling in. I never saw such
a preposterous little wharf. Whenever I watched it closely, it refused
to roll; but as soon as I took my attention off from it, away it went,
just like the _Snark_. Once, I caught it in the act, just as it
upended, and I looked down the length of it for two hundred feet, and
for all the world it was like the deck of a ship ducking into a huge
head-sea.

At last, however, supported by our hosts, we negotiated the wharf and
gained the land. But the land was no better. The very first thing it
did was to tilt up on one side, and far as the eye could see I watched
it tilt, clear to its jagged, volcanic backbone, and I saw the clouds
above tilt, too. This was no stable, firm-founded land, else it would
not cut such capers. It was like all the rest of our landfall, unreal.
It was a dream. At any moment, like shifting vapour, it might dissolve
away. The thought entered my head that perhaps it was my fault, that my
head was swimming or that something I had eaten had disagreed with me.
But I glanced at Charmian and her sad walk, and even as I glanced I saw
her stagger and bump into the yachtsman by whose side she walked. I
spoke to her, and she complained about the antic behaviour of the land.

We walked across a spacious, wonderful lawn and down an avenue of royal
palms, and across more wonderful lawn in the gracious shade of stately
trees. The air was filled with the songs of birds and was heavy with
rich warm fragrances—wafture from great lilies, and blazing blossoms of
hibiscus, and other strange gorgeous tropic flowers. The dream was
becoming almost impossibly beautiful to us who for so long had seen
naught but the restless, salty sea. Charmian reached out her hand and
clung to me—for support against the ineffable beauty of it, thought I.
But no. As I supported her I braced my legs, while the flowers and
lawns reeled and swung around me. It was like an earthquake, only it
quickly passed without doing any harm. It was fairly difficult to catch
the land playing these tricks. As long as I kept my mind on it, nothing
happened. But as soon as my attention was distracted, away it went, the
whole panorama, swinging and heaving and tilting at all sorts of
angles. Once, however, I turned my head suddenly and caught that
stately line of royal palms swinging in a great arc across the sky. But
it stopped, just as soon as I caught it, and became a placid dream
again.

Next we came to a house of coolness, with great sweeping veranda, where
lotus-eaters might dwell. Windows and doors were wide open to the
breeze, and the songs and fragrances blew lazily in and out. The walls
were hung with tapa-cloths. Couches with grass-woven covers invited
everywhere, and there was a grand piano, that played, I was sure,
nothing more exciting than lullabies. Servants—Japanese maids in native
costume—drifted around and about, noiselessly, like butterflies.
Everything was preternaturally cool. Here was no blazing down of a
tropic sun upon an unshrinking sea. It was too good to be true. But it
was not real. It was a dream-dwelling. I knew, for I turned suddenly
and caught the grand piano cavorting in a spacious corner of the room.
I did not say anything, for just then we were being received by a
gracious woman, a beautiful Madonna, clad in flowing white and shod
with sandals, who greeted us as though she had known us always.

We sat at table on the lotus-eating veranda, served by the butterfly
maids, and ate strange foods and partook of a nectar called poi. But
the dream threatened to dissolve. It shimmered and trembled like an
iridescent bubble about to break. I was just glancing out at the green
grass and stately trees and blossoms of hibiscus, when suddenly I felt
the table move. The table, and the Madonna across from me, and the
veranda of the lotus-eaters, the scarlet hibiscus, the greensward and
the trees—all lifted and tilted before my eyes, and heaved and sank
down into the trough of a monstrous sea. I gripped my chair
convulsively and held on. I had a feeling that I was holding on to the
dream as well as the chair. I should not have been surprised had the
sea rushed in and drowned all that fairyland and had I found myself at
the wheel of the _Snark_ just looking up casually from the study of
logarithms. But the dream persisted. I looked covertly at the Madonna
and her husband. They evidenced no perturbation. The dishes had not
moved upon the table. The hibiscus and trees and grass were still
there. Nothing had changed. I partook of more nectar, and the dream was
more real than ever.

“Will you have some iced tea?” asked the Madonna; and then her side of
the table sank down gently and I said yes to her at an angle of
forty-five degrees.

“Speaking of sharks,” said her husband, “up at Niihau there was a man—”
And at that moment the table lifted and heaved, and I gazed upward at
him at an angle of forty-five degrees.

So the luncheon went on, and I was glad that I did not have to bear the
affliction of watching Charmian walk. Suddenly, however, a mysterious
word of fear broke from the lips of the lotus-eaters. “Ah, ah,” thought
I, “now the dream goes glimmering.” I clutched the chair desperately,
resolved to drag back to the reality of the _Snark_ some tangible
vestige of this lotus land. I felt the whole dream lurching and pulling
to be gone. Just then the mysterious word of fear was repeated. It
sounded like _Reporters_. I looked and saw three of them coming across
the lawn. Oh, blessed reporters! Then the dream was indisputably real
after all. I glanced out across the shining water and saw the _Snark_
at anchor, and I remembered that I had sailed in her from San Francisco
to Hawaii, and that this was Pearl Harbour, and that even then I was
acknowledging introductions and saying, in reply to the first question,
“Yes, we had delightful weather all the way down.”




CHAPTER VI
A ROYAL SPORT


That is what it is, a royal sport for the natural kings of earth. The
grass grows right down to the water at Waikiki Beach, and within fifty
feet of the everlasting sea. The trees also grow down to the salty edge
of things, and one sits in their shade and looks seaward at a majestic
surf thundering in on the beach to one’s very feet. Half a mile out,
where is the reef, the white-headed combers thrust suddenly skyward out
of the placid turquoise-blue and come rolling in to shore. One after
another they come, a mile long, with smoking crests, the white
battalions of the infinite army of the sea. And one sits and listens to
the perpetual roar, and watches the unending procession, and feels tiny
and fragile before this tremendous force expressing itself in fury and
foam and sound. Indeed, one feels microscopically small, and the
thought that one may wrestle with this sea raises in one’s imagination
a thrill of apprehension, almost of fear. Why, they are a mile long,
these bull-mouthed monsters, and they weigh a thousand tons, and they
charge in to shore faster than a man can run. What chance? No chance at
all, is the verdict of the shrinking ego; and one sits, and looks, and
listens, and thinks the grass and the shade are a pretty good place in
which to be.

And suddenly, out there where a big smoker lifts skyward, rising like a
sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white, on the
giddy, toppling, overhanging and downfalling, precarious crest appears
the dark head of a man. Swiftly he rises through the rushing white. His
black shoulders, his chest, his loins, his limbs—all is abruptly
projected on one’s vision. Where but the moment before was only the
wide desolation and invincible roar, is now a man, erect,
full-statured, not struggling frantically in that wild movement, not
buried and crushed and buffeted by those mighty monsters, but standing
above them all, calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet
buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees, and
all the rest of him in the free air and flashing sunlight, and he is
flying through the air, flying forward, flying fast as the surge on
which he stands. He is a Mercury—a brown Mercury. His heels are winged,
and in them is the swiftness of the sea. In truth, from out of the sea
he has leaped upon the back of the sea, and he is riding the sea that
roars and bellows and cannot shake him from its back. But no frantic
outreaching and balancing is his. He is impassive, motionless as a
statue carved suddenly by some miracle out of the sea’s depth from
which he rose. And straight on toward shore he flies on his winged
heels and the white crest of the breaker. There is a wild burst of
foam, a long tumultuous rushing sound as the breaker falls futile and
spent on the beach at your feet; and there, at your feet steps calmly
ashore a Kanaka, burnt, golden and brown by the tropic sun. Several
minutes ago he was a speck a quarter of a mile away. He has “bitted the
bull-mouthed breaker” and ridden it in, and the pride in the feat shows
in the carriage of his magnificent body as he glances for a moment
carelessly at you who sit in the shade of the shore. He is a Kanaka—and
more, he is a man, a member of the kingly species that has mastered
matter and the brutes and lorded it over creation.

And one sits and thinks of Tristram’s last wrestle with the sea on that
fatal morning; and one thinks further, to the fact that that Kanaka has
done what Tristram never did, and that he knows a joy of the sea that
Tristram never knew. And still further one thinks. It is all very well,
sitting here in cool shade of the beach, but you are a man, one of the
kingly species, and what that Kanaka can do, you can do yourself. Go
to. Strip off your clothes that are a nuisance in this mellow clime.
Get in and wrestle with the sea; wing your heels with the skill and
power that reside in you; bit the sea’s breakers, master them, and ride
upon their backs as a king should.

And that is how it came about that I tackled surf-riding. And now that
I have tackled it, more than ever do I hold it to be a royal sport. But
first let me explain the physics of it. A wave is a communicated
agitation. The water that composes the body of a wave does not move. If
it did, when a stone is thrown into a pond and the ripples spread away
in an ever widening circle, there would appear at the centre an ever
increasing hole. No, the water that composes the body of a wave is
stationary. Thus, you may watch a particular portion of the ocean’s
surface and you will see the same water rise and fall a thousand times
to the agitation communicated by a thousand successive waves. Now
imagine this communicated agitation moving shoreward. As the bottom
shoals, the lower portion of the wave strikes land first and is
stopped. But water is fluid, and the upper portion has not struck
anything, wherefore it keeps on communicating its agitation, keeps on
going. And when the top of the wave keeps on going, while the bottom of
it lags behind, something is bound to happen. The bottom of the wave
drops out from under and the top of the wave falls over, forward, and
down, curling and cresting and roaring as it does so. It is the bottom
of a wave striking against the top of the land that is the cause of all
surfs.

But the transformation from a smooth undulation to a breaker is not
abrupt except where the bottom shoals abruptly. Say the bottom shoals
gradually for from quarter of a mile to a mile, then an equal distance
will be occupied by the transformation. Such a bottom is that off the
beach of Waikiki, and it produces a splendid surf-riding surf. One
leaps upon the back of a breaker just as it begins to break, and stays
on it as it continues to break all the way in to shore.

And now to the particular physics of surf-riding. Get out on a flat
board, six feet long, two feet wide, and roughly oval in shape. Lie
down upon it like a small boy on a coaster and paddle with your hands
out to deep water, where the waves begin to crest. Lie out there
quietly on the board. Sea after sea breaks before, behind, and under
and over you, and rushes in to shore, leaving you behind. When a wave
crests, it gets steeper. Imagine yourself, on your hoard, on the face
of that steep slope. If it stood still, you would slide down just as a
boy slides down a hill on his coaster. “But,” you object, “the wave
doesn’t stand still.” Very true, but the water composing the wave
stands still, and there you have the secret. If ever you start sliding
down the face of that wave, you’ll keep on sliding and you’ll never
reach the bottom. Please don’t laugh. The face of that wave may be only
six feet, yet you can slide down it a quarter of a mile, or half a
mile, and not reach the bottom. For, see, since a wave is only a
communicated agitation or impetus, and since the water that composes a
wave is changing every instant, new water is rising into the wave as
fast as the wave travels. You slide down this new water, and yet remain
in your old position on the wave, sliding down the still newer water
that is rising and forming the wave. You slide precisely as fast as the
wave travels. If it travels fifteen miles an hour, you slide fifteen
miles an hour. Between you and shore stretches a quarter of mile of
water. As the wave travels, this water obligingly heaps itself into the
wave, gravity does the rest, and down you go, sliding the whole length
of it. If you still cherish the notion, while sliding, that the water
is moving with you, thrust your arms into it and attempt to paddle; you
will find that you have to be remarkably quick to get a stroke, for
that water is dropping astern just as fast as you are rushing ahead.

And now for another phase of the physics of surf-riding. All rules have
their exceptions. It is true that the water in a wave does not travel
forward. But there is what may be called the send of the sea. The water
in the overtoppling crest does move forward, as you will speedily
realize if you are slapped in the face by it, or if you are caught
under it and are pounded by one mighty blow down under the surface
panting and gasping for half a minute. The water in the top of a wave
rests upon the water in the bottom of the wave. But when the bottom of
the wave strikes the land, it stops, while the top goes on. It no
longer has the bottom of the wave to hold it up. Where was solid water
beneath it, is now air, and for the first time it feels the grip of
gravity, and down it falls, at the same time being torn asunder from
the lagging bottom of the wave and flung forward. And it is because of
this that riding a surf-board is something more than a mere placid
sliding down a hill. In truth, one is caught up and hurled shoreward as
by some Titan’s hand.

I deserted the cool shade, put on a swimming suit, and got hold of a
surf-board. It was too small a board. But I didn’t know, and nobody
told me. I joined some little Kanaka boys in shallow water, where the
breakers were well spent and small—a regular kindergarten school. I
watched the little Kanaka boys. When a likely-looking breaker came
along, they flopped upon their stomachs on their boards, kicked like
mad with their feet, and rode the breaker in to the beach. I tried to
emulate them. I watched them, tried to do everything that they did, and
failed utterly. The breaker swept past, and I was not on it. I tried
again and again. I kicked twice as madly as they did, and failed. Half
a dozen would be around. We would all leap on our boards in front of a
good breaker. Away our feet would churn like the stern-wheels of river
steamboats, and away the little rascals would scoot while I remained in
disgrace behind.

I tried for a solid hour, and not one wave could I persuade to boost me
shoreward. And then arrived a friend, Alexander Hume Ford, a globe
trotter by profession, bent ever on the pursuit of sensation. And he
had found it at Waikiki. Heading for Australia, he had stopped off for
a week to find out if there were any thrills in surf-riding, and he had
become wedded to it. He had been at it every day for a month and could
not yet see any symptoms of the fascination lessening on him. He spoke
with authority.

“Get off that board,” he said. “Chuck it away at once. Look at the way
you’re trying to ride it. If ever the nose of that board hits bottom,
you’ll be disembowelled. Here, take my board. It’s a man’s size.”

I am always humble when confronted by knowledge. Ford knew. He showed
me how properly to mount his board. Then he waited for a good breaker,
gave me a shove at the right moment, and started me in. Ah, delicious
moment when I felt that breaker grip and fling me.

On I dashed, a hundred and fifty feet, and subsided with the breaker on
the sand. From that moment I was lost. I waded back to Ford with his
board. It was a large one, several inches thick, and weighed all of
seventy-five pounds. He gave me advice, much of it. He had had no one
to teach him, and all that he had laboriously learned in several weeks
he communicated to me in half an hour. I really learned by proxy. And
inside of half an hour I was able to start myself and ride in. I did it
time after time, and Ford applauded and advised. For instance, he told
me to get just so far forward on the board and no farther. But I must
have got some farther, for as I came charging in to land, that
miserable board poked its nose down to bottom, stopped abruptly, and
turned a somersault, at the same time violently severing our relations.
I was tossed through the air like a chip and buried ignominiously under
the downfalling breaker. And I realized that if it hadn’t been for
Ford, I’d have been disembowelled. That particular risk is part of the
sport, Ford says. Maybe he’ll have it happen to him before he leaves
Waikiki, and then, I feel confident, his yearning for sensation will be
satisfied for a time.

When all is said and done, it is my steadfast belief that homicide is
worse than suicide, especially if, in the former case, it is a woman.
Ford saved me from being a homicide. “Imagine your legs are a rudder,”
he said. “Hold them close together, and steer with them.” A few minutes
later I came charging in on a comber. As I neared the beach, there, in
the water, up to her waist, dead in front of me, appeared a woman. How
was I to stop that comber on whose back I was? It looked like a dead
woman. The board weighed seventy-five pounds, I weighed a hundred and
sixty-five. The added weight had a velocity of fifteen miles per hour.
The board and I constituted a projectile. I leave it to the physicists
to figure out the force of the impact upon that poor, tender woman. And
then I remembered my guardian angel, Ford. “Steer with your legs!” rang
through my brain. I steered with my legs, I steered sharply, abruptly,
with all my legs and with all my might. The board sheered around
broadside on the crest. Many things happened simultaneously. The wave
gave me a passing buffet, a light tap as the taps of waves go, but a
tap sufficient to knock me off the board and smash me down through the
rushing water to bottom, with which I came in violent collision and
upon which I was rolled over and over. I got my head out for a breath
of air and then gained my feet. There stood the woman before me. I felt
like a hero. I had saved her life. And she laughed at me. It was not
hysteria. She had never dreamed of her danger. Anyway, I solaced
myself, it was not I but Ford that saved her, and I didn’t have to feel
like a hero. And besides, that leg-steering was great. In a few minutes
more of practice I was able to thread my way in and out past several
bathers and to remain on top my breaker instead of going under it.

“To-morrow,” Ford said, “I am going to take you out into the blue
water.”

I looked seaward where he pointed, and saw the great smoking combers
that made the breakers I had been riding look like ripples. I don’t
know what I might have said had I not recollected just then that I was
one of a kingly species. So all that I did say was, “All right, I’ll
tackle them to-morrow.”

The water that rolls in on Waikiki Beach is just the same as the water
that laves the shores of all the Hawaiian Islands; and in ways,
especially from the swimmer’s standpoint, it is wonderful water. It is
cool enough to be comfortable, while it is warm enough to permit a
swimmer to stay in all day without experiencing a chill. Under the sun
or the stars, at high noon or at midnight, in midwinter or in
midsummer, it does not matter when, it is always the same
temperature—not too warm, not too cold, just right. It is wonderful
water, salt as old ocean itself, pure and crystal-clear. When the
nature of the water is considered, it is not so remarkable after all
that the Kanakas are one of the most expert of swimming races.

So it was, next morning, when Ford came along, that I plunged into the
wonderful water for a swim of indeterminate length. Astride of our
surf-boards, or, rather, flat down upon them on our stomachs, we
paddled out through the kindergarten where the little Kanaka boys were
at play. Soon we were out in deep water where the big smokers came
roaring in. The mere struggle with them, facing them and paddling
seaward over them and through them, was sport enough in itself. One had
to have his wits about him, for it was a battle in which mighty blows
were struck, on one side, and in which cunning was used on the other
side—a struggle between insensate force and intelligence. I soon
learned a bit. When a breaker curled over my head, for a swift instant
I could see the light of day through its emerald body; then down would
go my head, and I would clutch the board with all my strength. Then
would come the blow, and to the onlooker on shore I would be blotted
out. In reality the board and I have passed through the crest and
emerged in the respite of the other side. I should not recommend those
smashing blows to an invalid or delicate person. There is weight behind
them, and the impact of the driven water is like a sandblast. Sometimes
one passes through half a dozen combers in quick succession, and it is
just about that time that he is liable to discover new merits in the
stable land and new reasons for being on shore.

Out there in the midst of such a succession of big smoky ones, a third
man was added to our party, one Freeth. Shaking the water from my eyes
as I emerged from one wave and peered ahead to see what the next one
looked like, I saw him tearing in on the back of it, standing upright
on his board, carelessly poised, a young god bronzed with sunburn. We
went through the wave on the back of which he rode. Ford called to him.
He turned an airspring from his wave, rescued his board from its maw,
paddled over to us and joined Ford in showing me things. One thing in
particular I learned from Freeth, namely, how to encounter the
occasional breaker of exceptional size that rolled in. Such breakers
were really ferocious, and it was unsafe to meet them on top of the
board. But Freeth showed me, so that whenever I saw one of that calibre
rolling down on me, I slid off the rear end of the board and dropped
down beneath the surface, my arms over my head and holding the board.
Thus, if the wave ripped the board out of my hands and tried to strike
me with it (a common trick of such waves), there would be a cushion of
water a foot or more in depth, between my head and the blow. When the
wave passed, I climbed upon the board and paddled on. Many men have
been terribly injured, I learn, by being struck by their boards.

The whole method of surf-riding and surf-fighting, learned, is one of
non-resistance. Dodge the blow that is struck at you. Dive through the
wave that is trying to slap you in the face. Sink down, feet first,
deep under the surface, and let the big smoker that is trying to smash
you go by far overhead. Never be rigid. Relax. Yield yourself to the
waters that are ripping and tearing at you. When the undertow catches
you and drags you seaward along the bottom, don’t struggle against it.
If you do, you are liable to be drowned, for it is stronger than you.
Yield yourself to that undertow. Swim with it, not against it, and you
will find the pressure removed. And, swimming with it, fooling it so
that it does not hold you, swim upward at the same time. It will be no
trouble at all to reach the surface.

The man who wants to learn surf-riding must be a strong swimmer, and he
must be used to going under the water. After that, fair strength and
common-sense are all that is required. The force of the big comber is
rather unexpected. There are mix-ups in which board and rider are torn
apart and separated by several hundred feet. The surf-rider must take
care of himself. No matter how many riders swim out with him, he cannot
depend upon any of them for aid. The fancied security I had in the
presence of Ford and Freeth made me forget that it was my first swim
out in deep water among the big ones. I recollected, however, and
rather suddenly, for a big wave came in, and away went the two men on
its back all the way to shore. I could have been drowned a dozen
different ways before they got back to me.

One slides down the face of a breaker on his surf-board, but he has to
get started to sliding. Board and rider must be moving shoreward at a
good rate before the wave overtakes them. When you see the wave coming
that you want to ride in, you turn tail to it and paddle shoreward with
all your strength, using what is called the windmill stroke. This is a
sort of spurt performed immediately in front of the wave. If the board
is going fast enough, the wave accelerates it, and the board begins its
quarter-of-a-mile slide.

I shall never forget the first big wave I caught out there in the deep
water. I saw it coming, turned my back on it and paddled for dear life.
Faster and faster my board went, till it seemed my arms would drop off.
What was happening behind me I could not tell. One cannot look behind
and paddle the windmill stroke. I heard the crest of the wave hissing
and churning, and then my board was lifted and flung forward. I
scarcely knew what happened the first half-minute. Though I kept my
eyes open, I could not see anything, for I was buried in the rushing
white of the crest. But I did not mind. I was chiefly conscious of
ecstatic bliss at having caught the wave. At the end of the
half-minute, however, I began to see things, and to breathe. I saw that
three feet of the nose of my board was clear out of water and riding on
the air. I shifted my weight forward, and made the nose come down. Then
I lay, quite at rest in the midst of the wild movement, and watched the
shore and the bathers on the beach grow distinct. I didn’t cover quite
a quarter of a mile on that wave, because, to prevent the board from
diving, I shifted my weight back, but shifted it too far and fell down
the rear slope of the wave.

It was my second day at surf-riding, and I was quite proud of myself. I
stayed out there four hours, and when it was over, I was resolved that
on the morrow I’d come in standing up. But that resolution paved a
distant place. On the morrow I was in bed. I was not sick, but I was
very unhappy, and I was in bed. When describing the wonderful water of
Hawaii I forgot to describe the wonderful sun of Hawaii. It is a tropic
sun, and, furthermore, in the first part of June, it is an overhead
sun. It is also an insidious, deceitful sun. For the first time in my
life I was sunburned unawares. My arms, shoulders, and back had been
burned many times in the past and were tough; but not so my legs. And
for four hours I had exposed the tender backs of my legs, at
right-angles, to that perpendicular Hawaiian sun. It was not until
after I got ashore that I discovered the sun had touched me. Sunburn at
first is merely warm; after that it grows intense and the blisters come
out. Also, the joints, where the skin wrinkles, refuse to bend. That is
why I spent the next day in bed. I couldn’t walk. And that is why,
to-day, I am writing this in bed. It is easier to than not to. But
to-morrow, ah, to-morrow, I shall be out in that wonderful water, and I
shall come in standing up, even as Ford and Freeth. And if I fail
to-morrow, I shall do it the next day, or the next. Upon one thing I am
resolved: the _Snark_ shall not sail from Honolulu until I, too, wing
my heels with the swiftness of the sea, and become a sun-burned,
skin-peeling Mercury.




CHAPTER VII
THE LEPERS OF MOLOKAI


When the _Snark_ sailed along the windward coast of Molokai, on her way
to Honolulu, I looked at the chart, then pointed to a low-lying
peninsula backed by a tremendous cliff varying from two to four
thousand feet in height, and said: “The pit of hell, the most cursed
place on earth.” I should have been shocked, if, at that moment, I
could have caught a vision of myself a month later, ashore in the most
cursed place on earth and having a disgracefully good time along with
eight hundred of the lepers who were likewise having a good time. Their
good time was not disgraceful; but mine was, for in the midst of so
much misery it was not meet for me to have a good time. That is the way
I felt about it, and my only excuse is that I couldn’t help having a
good time.

For instance, in the afternoon of the Fourth of July all the lepers
gathered at the race-track for the sports. I had wandered away from the
Superintendent and the physicians in order to get a snapshot of the
finish of one of the races. It was an interesting race, and
partisanship ran high. Three horses were entered, one ridden by a
Chinese, one by an Hawaiian, and one by a Portuguese boy. All three
riders were lepers; so were the judges and the crowd. The race was
twice around the track. The Chinese and the Hawaiian got away together
and rode neck and neck, the Portuguese boy toiling along two hundred
feet behind. Around they went in the same positions. Halfway around on
the second and final lap the Chinese pulled away and got one length
ahead of the Hawaiian. At the same time the Portuguese boy was
beginning to crawl up. But it looked hopeless. The crowd went wild. All
the lepers were passionate lovers of horseflesh. The Portuguese boy
crawled nearer and nearer. I went wild, too. They were on the home
stretch. The Portuguese boy passed the Hawaiian. There was a thunder of
hoofs, a rush of the three horses bunched together, the jockeys plying
their whips, and every last onlooker bursting his throat, or hers, with
shouts and yells. Nearer, nearer, inch by inch, the Portuguese boy
crept up, and passed, yes, passed, winning by a head from the Chinese.
I came to myself in a group of lepers. They were yelling, tossing their
hats, and dancing around like fiends. So was I. When I came to I was
waving my hat and murmuring ecstatically: “By golly, the boy wins! The
boy wins!”

I tried to check myself. I assured myself that I was witnessing one of
the horrors of Molokai, and that it was shameful for me, under such
circumstances, to be so light-hearted and light-headed. But it was no
use. The next event was a donkey-race, and it was just starting; so was
the fun. The last donkey in was to win the race, and what complicated
the affair was that no rider rode his own donkey. They rode one
another’s donkeys, the result of which was that each man strove to make
the donkey he rode beat his own donkey ridden by some one else,
Naturally, only men possessing very slow or extremely obstreperous
donkeys had entered them for the race. One donkey had been trained to
tuck in its legs and lie down whenever its rider touched its sides with
his heels. Some donkeys strove to turn around and come back; others
developed a penchant for the side of the track, where they stuck their
heads over the railing and stopped; while all of them dawdled. Halfway
around the track one donkey got into an argument with its rider. When
all the rest of the donkeys had crossed the wire, that particular
donkey was still arguing. He won the race, though his rider lost it and
came in on foot. And all the while nearly a thousand lepers were
laughing uproariously at the fun. Anybody in my place would have joined
with them in having a good time.

All the foregoing is by way of preamble to the statement that the
horrors of Molokai, as they have been painted in the past, do not
exist. The Settlement has been written up repeatedly by
sensationalists, and usually by sensationalists who have never laid
eyes on it. Of course, leprosy is leprosy, and it is a terrible thing;
but so much that is lurid has been written about Molokai that neither
the lepers, nor those who devote their lives to them, have received a
fair deal. Here is a case in point. A newspaper writer, who, of course,
had never been near the Settlement, vividly described Superintendent
McVeigh, crouching in a grass hut and being besieged nightly by
starving lepers on their knees, wailing for food. This hair-raising
account was copied by the press all over the United States and was the
cause of many indignant and protesting editorials. Well, I lived and
slept for five days in Mr. McVeigh’s “grass hut” (which was a
comfortable wooden cottage, by the way; and there isn’t a grass house
in the whole Settlement), and I heard the lepers wailing for food—only
the wailing was peculiarly harmonious and rhythmic, and it was
accompanied by the music of stringed instruments, violins, guitars,
_ukuleles_, and banjos. Also, the wailing was of various sorts. The
leper brass band wailed, and two singing societies wailed, and lastly a
quintet of excellent voices wailed. So much for a lie that should never
have been printed. The wailing was the serenade which the glee clubs
always give Mr. McVeigh when he returns from a trip to Honolulu.

Leprosy is not so contagious as is imagined. I went for a week’s visit
to the Settlement, and I took my wife along—all of which would not have
happened had we had any apprehension of contracting the disease. Nor
did we wear long, gauntleted gloves and keep apart from the lepers. On
the contrary, we mingled freely with them, and before we left, knew
scores of them by sight and name. The precautions of simple cleanliness
seem to be all that is necessary. On returning to their own houses,
after having been among and handling lepers, the non-lepers, such as
the physicians and the superintendent, merely wash their faces and
hands with mildly antiseptic soap and change their coats.

That a leper is unclean, however, should be insisted upon; and the
segregation of lepers, from what little is known of the disease, should
be rigidly maintained. On the other hand, the awful horror with which
the leper has been regarded in the past, and the frightful treatment he
has received, have been unnecessary and cruel. In order to dispel some
of the popular misapprehensions of leprosy, I want to tell something of
the relations between the lepers and non-lepers as I observed them at
Molokai. On the morning after our arrival Charmian and I attended a
shoot of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, and caught our first glimpse of the
democracy of affliction and alleviation that obtains. The club was just
beginning a prize shoot for a cup put up by Mr. McVeigh, who is also a
member of the club, as also are Dr. Goodhue and Dr. Hollmann, the
resident physicians (who, by the way, live in the Settlement with their
wives). All about us, in the shooting booth, were the lepers. Lepers
and non-lepers were using the same guns, and all were rubbing shoulders
in the confined space. The majority of the lepers were Hawaiians.
Sitting beside me on a bench was a Norwegian. Directly in front of me,
in the stand, was an American, a veteran of the Civil War, who had
fought on the Confederate side. He was sixty-five years of age, but
that did not prevent him from running up a good score. Strapping
Hawaiian policemen, lepers, khaki-clad, were also shooting, as were
Portuguese, Chinese, and kokuas—the latter are native helpers in the
Settlement who are non-lepers. And on the afternoon that Charmian and I
climbed the two-thousand-foot _pali_ and looked our last upon the
Settlement, the superintendent, the doctors, and the mixture of
nationalities and of diseased and non-diseased were all engaged in an
exciting baseball game.

Not so was the leper and his greatly misunderstood and feared disease
treated during the middle ages in Europe. At that time the leper was
considered legally and politically dead. He was placed in a funeral
procession and led to the church, where the burial service was read
over him by the officiating clergyman. Then a spadeful of earth was
dropped upon his chest and he was dead-living dead. While this rigorous
treatment was largely unnecessary, nevertheless, one thing was learned
by it. Leprosy was unknown in Europe until it was introduced by the
returning Crusaders, whereupon it spread slowly until it had seized
upon large numbers of the people. Obviously, it was a disease that
could be contracted by contact. It was a contagion, and it was equally
obvious that it could be eradicated by segregation. Terrible and
monstrous as was the treatment of the leper in those days, the great
lesson of segregation was learned. By its means leprosy was stamped
out.

And by the same means leprosy is even now decreasing in the Hawaiian
Islands. But the segregation of the lepers on Molokai is not the
horrible nightmare that has been so often exploited by _yellow_
writers. In the first place, the leper is not torn ruthlessly from his
family. When a suspect is discovered, he is invited by the Board of
Health to come to the Kalihi receiving station at Honolulu. His fare
and all expenses are paid for him. He is first passed upon by
microscopical examination by the bacteriologist of the Board of Health.
If the _bacillus lepræ_ is found, the patient is examined by the Board
of Examining Physicians, five in number. If found by them to be a
leper, he is so declared, which finding is later officially confirmed
by the Board of Health, and the leper is ordered straight to Molokai.
Furthermore, during the thorough trial that is given his case, the
patient has the right to be represented by a physician whom he can
select and employ for himself. Nor, after having been declared a leper,
is the patient immediately rushed off to Molokai. He is given ample
time, weeks, and even months, sometimes, during which he stays at
Kalihi and winds up or arranges all his business affairs. At Molokai,
in turn, he may be visited by his relatives, business agents, etc.,
though they are not permitted to eat and sleep in his house. Visitors’
houses, kept “clean,” are maintained for this purpose.

I saw an illustration of the thorough trial given the suspect, when I
visited Kalihi with Mr. Pinkham, president of the Board of Health. The
suspect was an Hawaiian, seventy years of age, who for thirty-four
years had worked in Honolulu as a pressman in a printing office. The
bacteriologist had decided that he was a leper, the Examining Board had
been unable to make up its mind, and that day all had come out to
Kalihi to make another examination.

When at Molokai, the declared leper has the privilege of
re-examination, and patients are continually coming back to Honolulu
for that purpose. The steamer that took me to Molokai had on board two
returning lepers, both young women, one of whom had come to Honolulu to
settle up some property she owned, and the other had come to Honolulu
to see her sick mother. Both had remained at Kalihi for a month.

The Settlement of Molokai enjoys a far more delightful climate than
even Honolulu, being situated on the windward side of the island in the
path of the fresh north-east trades. The scenery is magnificent; on one
side is the blue sea, on the other the wonderful wall of the _pali_,
receding here and there into beautiful mountain valleys. Everywhere are
grassy pastures over which roam the hundreds of horses which are owned
by the lepers. Some of them have their own carts, rigs, and traps. In
the little harbour of Kalaupapa lie fishing boats and a steam launch,
all of which are privately owned and operated by lepers. Their bounds
upon the sea are, of course, determined: otherwise no restriction is
put upon their sea-faring. Their fish they sell to the Board of Health,
and the money they receive is their own. While I was there, one night’s
catch was four thousand pounds.

And as these men fish, others farm. All trades are followed. One leper,
a pure Hawaiian, is the boss painter. He employs eight men, and takes
contracts for painting buildings from the Board of Health. He is a
member of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, where I met him, and I must confess
that he was far better dressed than I. Another man, similarly situated,
is the boss carpenter. Then, in addition to the Board of Health store,
there are little privately owned stores, where those with shopkeeper’s
souls may exercise their peculiar instincts. The Assistant
Superintendent, Mr. Waiamau, a finely educated and able man, is a pure
Hawaiian and a leper. Mr. Bartlett, who is the present storekeeper, is
an American who was in business in Honolulu before he was struck down
by the disease. All that these men earn is that much in their own
pockets. If they do not work, they are taken care of anyway by the
territory, given food, shelter, clothes, and medical attendance. The
Board of Health carries on agriculture, stock-raising, and dairying,
for local use, and employment at fair wages is furnished to all that
wish to work. They are not compelled to work, however, for they are the
wards of the territory. For the young, and the very old, and the
helpless there are homes and hospitals.

Major Lee, an American and long a marine engineer for the Inter Island
Steamship Company, I met actively at work in the new steam laundry,
where he was busy installing the machinery. I met him often,
afterwards, and one day he said to me:

“Give us a good breeze about how we live here. For heaven’s sake write
us up straight. Put your foot down on this chamber-of-horrors rot and
all the rest of it. We don’t like being misrepresented. We’ve got some
feelings. Just tell the world how we really are in here.”

Man after man that I met in the Settlement, and woman after woman, in
one way or another expressed the same sentiment. It was patent that
they resented bitterly the sensational and untruthful way in which they
have been exploited in the past.

In spite of the fact that they are afflicted by disease, the lepers
form a happy colony, divided into two villages and numerous country and
seaside homes, of nearly a thousand souls. They have six churches, a
Young Men’s Christian Association building, several assembly halls, a
band stand, a race-track, baseball grounds, shooting ranges, an
athletic club, numerous glee clubs, and two brass bands.

“They are so contented down there,” Mr. Pinkham told me, “that you
can’t drive them away with a shot-gun.”

This I later verified for myself. In January of this year, eleven of
the lepers, on whom the disease, after having committed certain
ravages, showed no further signs of activity, were brought back to
Honolulu for re-examination. They were loath to come; and, on being
asked whether or not they wanted to go free if found clean of leprosy,
one and all answered, “Back to Molokai.”

In the old days, before the discovery of the leprosy bacillus, a small
number of men and women, suffering from various and wholly different
diseases, were adjudged lepers and sent to Molokai. Years afterward
they suffered great consternation when the bacteriologists declared
that they were not afflicted with leprosy and never had been. They
fought against being sent away from Molokai, and in one way or another,
as helpers and nurses, they got jobs from the Board of Health and
remained. The present jailer is one of these men. Declared to be a
non-leper, he accepted, on salary, the charge of the jail, in order to
escape being sent away.

At the present moment, in Honolulu, there is a bootblack. He is an
American negro. Mr. McVeigh told me about him. Long ago, before the
bacteriological tests, he was sent to Molokai as a leper. As a ward of
the state he developed a superlative degree of independence and
fomented much petty mischief. And then, one day, after having been for
years a perennial source of minor annoyances, the bacteriological test
was applied, and he was declared a non-leper.

“Ah, ha!” chortled Mr. McVeigh. “Now I’ve got you! Out you go on the
next steamer and good riddance!”

But the negro didn’t want to go. Immediately he married an old woman,
in the last stages of leprosy, and began petitioning the Board of
Health for permission to remain and nurse his sick wife. There was no
one, he said pathetically, who could take care of his poor wife as well
as he could. But they saw through his game, and he was deported on the
steamer and given the freedom of the world. But he preferred Molokai.
Landing on the leeward side of Molokai, he sneaked down the _pali_ one
night and took up his abode in the Settlement. He was apprehended,
tried and convicted of trespass, sentenced to pay a small fine, and
again deported on the steamer with the warning that if he trespassed
again, he would be fined one hundred dollars and be sent to prison in
Honolulu. And now, when Mr. McVeigh comes up to Honolulu, the bootblack
shines his shoes for him and says:

“Say, Boss, I lost a good home down there. Yes, sir, I lost a good
home.” Then his voice sinks to a confidential whisper as he says, “Say,
Boss, can’t I go back? Can’t you fix it for me so as I can go back?”

He had lived nine years on Molokai, and he had had a better time there
than he has ever had, before and after, on the outside.

As regards the fear of leprosy itself, nowhere in the Settlement among
lepers, or non-lepers, did I see any sign of it. The chief horror of
leprosy obtains in the minds of those who have never seen a leper and
who do not know anything about the disease. At the hotel at Waikiki a
lady expressed shuddering amazement at my having the hardihood to pay a
visit to the Settlement. On talking with her I learned that she had
been born in Honolulu, had lived there all her life, and had never laid
eyes on a leper. That was more than I could say of myself in the United
States, where the segregation of lepers is loosely enforced and where I
have repeatedly seen lepers on the streets of large cities.

Leprosy is terrible, there is no getting away from that; but from what
little I know of the disease and its degree of contagiousness, I would
by far prefer to spend the rest of my days in Molokai than in any
tuberculosis sanatorium. In every city and county hospital for poor
people in the United States, or in similar institutions in other
countries, sights as terrible as those in Molokai can be witnessed, and
the sum total of these sights is vastly more terrible. For that matter,
if it were given me to choose between being compelled to live in
Molokai for the rest of my life, or in the East End of London, the East
Side of New York, or the Stockyards of Chicago, I would select Molokai
without debate. I would prefer one year of life in Molokai to five
years of life in the above-mentioned cesspools of human degradation and
misery.

In Molokai the people are happy. I shall never forget the celebration
of the Fourth of July I witnessed there. At six o’clock in the morning
the “horribles” were out, dressed fantastically, astride horses, mules,
and donkeys (their own property), and cutting capers all over the
Settlement. Two brass bands were out as well. Then there were the
_pa-u_ riders, thirty or forty of them, Hawaiian women all, superb
horsewomen dressed gorgeously in the old, native riding costume, and
dashing about in twos and threes and groups. In the afternoon Charmian
and I stood in the judge’s stand and awarded the prizes for
horsemanship and costume to the _pa-u_ riders. All about were the
hundreds of lepers, with wreaths of flowers on heads and necks and
shoulders, looking on and making merry. And always, over the brows of
hills and across the grassy level stretches, appearing and
disappearing, were the groups of men and women, gaily dressed, on
galloping horses, horses and riders flower-bedecked and
flower-garlanded, singing, and laughing, and riding like the wind. And
as I stood in the judge’s stand and looked at all this, there came to
my recollection the lazar house of Havana, where I had once beheld some
two hundred lepers, prisoners inside four restricted walls until they
died. No, there are a few thousand places I wot of in this world over
which I would select Molokai as a place of permanent residence. In the
evening we went to one of the leper assembly halls, where, before a
crowded audience, the singing societies contested for prizes, and where
the night wound up with a dance. I have seen the Hawaiians living in
the slums of Honolulu, and, having seen them, I can readily understand
why the lepers, brought up from the Settlement for re-examination,
shouted one and all, “Back to Molokai!”

One thing is certain. The leper in the Settlement is far better off
than the leper who lies in hiding outside. Such a leper is a lonely
outcast, living in constant fear of discovery and slowly and surely
rotting away. The action of leprosy is not steady. It lays hold of its
victim, commits a ravage, and then lies dormant for an indeterminate
period. It may not commit another ravage for five years, or ten years,
or forty years, and the patient may enjoy uninterrupted good health.
Rarely, however, do these first ravages cease of themselves. The
skilled surgeon is required, and the skilled surgeon cannot be called
in for the leper who is in hiding. For instance, the first ravage may
take the form of a perforating ulcer in the sole of the foot. When the
bone is reached, necrosis sets in. If the leper is in hiding, he cannot
be operated upon, the necrosis will continue to eat its way up the bone
of the leg, and in a brief and horrible time that leper will die of
gangrene or some other terrible complication. On the other hand, if
that same leper is in Molokai, the surgeon will operate upon the foot,
remove the ulcer, cleanse the bone, and put a complete stop to that
particular ravage of the disease. A month after the operation the leper
will be out riding horseback, running foot races, swimming in the
breakers, or climbing the giddy sides of the valleys for mountain
apples. And as has been stated before, the disease, lying dormant, may
not again attack him for five, ten, or forty years.

The old horrors of leprosy go back to the conditions that obtained
before the days of antiseptic surgery, and before the time when
physicians like Dr. Goodhue and Dr. Hollmann went to live at the
Settlement. Dr. Goodhue is the pioneer surgeon there, and too much
praise cannot be given him for the noble work he has done. I spent one
morning in the operating room with him and of the three operations he
performed, two were on men, newcomers, who had arrived on the same
steamer with me. In each case, the disease had attacked in one spot
only. One had a perforating ulcer in the ankle, well advanced, and the
other man was suffering from a similar affliction, well advanced, under
his arm. Both cases were well advanced because the man had been on the
outside and had not been treated. In each case. Dr. Goodhue put an
immediate and complete stop to the ravage, and in four weeks those two
men will be as well and able-bodied as they ever were in their lives.
The only difference between them and you or me is that the disease is
lying dormant in their bodies and may at any future time commit another
ravage.

Leprosy is as old as history. References to it are found in the
earliest written records. And yet to-day practically nothing more is
known about it than was known then. This much was known then, namely,
that it was contagious and that those afflicted by it should be
segregated. The difference between then and now is that to-day the
leper is more rigidly segregated and more humanely treated. But leprosy
itself still remains the same awful and profound mystery. A reading of
the reports of the physicians and specialists of all countries reveals
the baffling nature of the disease. These leprosy specialists are
unanimous on no one phase of the disease. They do not know. In the past
they rashly and dogmatically generalized. They generalize no longer.
The one possible generalization that can be drawn from all the
investigation that has been made is that leprosy is _feebly
contagious_. But in what manner it is feebly contagious is not known.
They have isolated the bacillus of leprosy. They can determine by
bacteriological examination whether or not a person is a leper; but
they are as far away as ever from knowing how that bacillus finds its
entrance into the body of a non-leper. They do not know the length of
time of incubation. They have tried to inoculate all sorts of animals
with leprosy, and have failed.

They are baffled in the discovery of a serum wherewith to fight the
disease. And in all their work, as yet, they have found no clue, no
cure. Sometimes there have been blazes of hope, theories of causation
and much heralded cures, but every time the darkness of failure
quenched the flame. A doctor insists that the cause of leprosy is a
long-continued fish diet, and he proves his theory voluminously till a
physician from the highlands of India demands why the natives of that
district should therefore be afflicted by leprosy when they have never
eaten fish, nor all the generations of their fathers before them. A man
treats a leper with a certain kind of oil or drug, announces a cure,
and five, ten, or forty years afterwards the disease breaks out again.
It is this trick of leprosy lying dormant in the body for indeterminate
periods that is responsible for many alleged cures. But this much is
certain: _as yet there has been no authentic case of a cure_.

Leprosy is _feebly contagious_, but how is it contagious? An Austrian
physician has inoculated himself and his assistants with leprosy and
failed to catch it. But this is not conclusive, for there is the famous
case of the Hawaiian murderer who had his sentence of death commuted to
life imprisonment on his agreeing to be inoculated with the _bacillus
lepræ_. Some time after inoculation, leprosy made its appearance, and
the man died a leper on Molokai. Nor was this conclusive, for it was
discovered that at the time he was inoculated several members of his
family were already suffering from the disease on Molokai. He may have
contracted the disease from them, and it may have been well along in
its mysterious period of incubation at the time he was officially
inoculated. Then there is the case of that hero of the Church, Father
Damien, who went to Molokai a clean man and died a leper. There have
been many theories as to how he contracted leprosy, but nobody knows.
He never knew himself. But every chance that he ran has certainly been
run by a woman at present living in the Settlement; who has lived there
many years; who has had five leper husbands, and had children by them;
and who is to-day, as she always has been, free of the disease.

As yet no light has been shed upon the mystery of leprosy. When more is
learned about the disease, a cure for it may be expected. Once an
efficacious serum is discovered, and leprosy, because it is so feebly
contagious, will pass away swiftly from the earth. The battle waged
with it will be short and sharp. In the meantime, how to discover that
serum, or some other unguessed weapon? In the present it is a serious
matter. It is estimated that there are half a million lepers, not
segregated, in India alone. Carnegie libraries, Rockefeller
universities, and many similar benefactions are all very well; but one
cannot help thinking how far a few thousands of dollars would go, say
in the leper Settlement of Molokai. The residents there are accidents
of fate, scapegoats to some mysterious natural law of which man knows
nothing, isolated for the welfare of their fellows who else might catch
the dread disease, even as they have caught it, nobody knows how. Not
for their sakes merely, but for the sake of future generations, a few
thousands of dollars would go far in a legitimate and scientific search
after a cure for leprosy, for a serum, or for some undreamed discovery
that will enable the medical world to exterminate the _bacillus lepræ_.
There’s the place for your money, you philanthropists.




CHAPTER VIII
THE HOUSE OF THE SUN


There are hosts of people who journey like restless spirits round and
about this earth in search of seascapes and landscapes and the wonders
and beauties of nature. They overrun Europe in armies; they can be met
in droves and herds in Florida and the West Indies, at the Pyramids,
and on the slopes and summits of the Canadian and American Rockies; but
in the House of the Sun they are as rare as live and wriggling
dinosaurs. Haleakala is the Hawaiian name for “the House of the Sun.”
It is a noble dwelling, situated on the Island of Maui; but so few
tourists have ever peeped into it, much less entered it, that their
number may be practically reckoned as zero. Yet I venture to state that
for natural beauty and wonder the nature-lover may see dissimilar
things as great as Haleakala, but no greater, while he will never see
elsewhere anything more beautiful or wonderful. Honolulu is six days’
steaming from San Francisco; Maui is a night’s run on the steamer from
Honolulu; and six hours more if he is in a hurry, can bring the
traveller to Kolikoli, which is ten thousand and thirty-two feet above
the sea and which stands hard by the entrance portal to the House of
the Sun. Yet the tourist comes not, and Haleakala sleeps on in lonely
and unseen grandeur.

Not being tourists, we of the _Snark_ went to Haleakala. On the slopes
of that monster mountain there is a cattle ranch of some fifty thousand
acres, where we spent the night at an altitude of two thousand feet.
The next morning it was boots and saddles, and with cow-boys and
packhorses we climbed to Ukulele, a mountain ranch-house, the altitude
of which, fifty-five hundred feet, gives a severely temperate climate,
compelling blankets at night and a roaring fireplace in the
living-room. Ukulele, by the way, is the Hawaiian for “jumping flea” as
it is also the Hawaiian for a certain musical instrument that may be
likened to a young guitar. It is my opinion that the mountain
ranch-house was named after the young guitar. We were not in a hurry,
and we spent the day at Ukulele, learnedly discussing altitudes and
barometers and shaking our particular barometer whenever any one’s
argument stood in need of demonstration. Our barometer was the most
graciously acquiescent instrument I have ever seen. Also, we gathered
mountain raspberries, large as hen’s eggs and larger, gazed up the
pasture-covered lava slopes to the summit of Haleakala, forty-five
hundred feet above us, and looked down upon a mighty battle of the
clouds that was being fought beneath us, ourselves in the bright
sunshine.

Every day and every day this unending battle goes on. Ukiukiu is the
name of the trade-wind that comes raging down out of the north-east and
hurls itself upon Haleakala. Now Haleakala is so bulky and tall that it
turns the north-east trade-wind aside on either hand, so that in the
lee of Haleakala no trade-wind blows at all. On the contrary, the wind
blows in the counter direction, in the teeth of the north-east trade.
This wind is called Naulu. And day and night and always Ukiukiu and
Naulu strive with each other, advancing, retreating, flanking, curving,
curling, and turning and twisting, the conflict made visible by the
cloud-masses plucked from the heavens and hurled back and forth in
squadrons, battalions, armies, and great mountain ranges. Once in a
while, Ukiukiu, in mighty gusts, flings immense cloud-masses clear over
the summit of Haleakala; whereupon Naulu craftily captures them, lines
them up in new battle-formation, and with them smites back at his
ancient and eternal antagonist. Then Ukiukiu sends a great cloud-army
around the eastern-side of the mountain. It is a flanking movement,
well executed. But Naulu, from his lair on the leeward side, gathers
the flanking army in, pulling and twisting and dragging it, hammering
it into shape, and sends it charging back against Ukiukiu around the
western side of the mountain. And all the while, above and below the
main battle-field, high up the slopes toward the sea, Ukiukiu and Naulu
are continually sending out little wisps of cloud, in ragged skirmish
line, that creep and crawl over the ground, among the trees and through
the canyons, and that spring upon and capture one another in sudden
ambuscades and sorties. And sometimes Ukiukiu or Naulu, abruptly
sending out a heavy charging column, captures the ragged little
skirmishers or drives them skyward, turning over and over, in vertical
whirls, thousands of feet in the air.

But it is on the western slopes of Haleakala that the main battle goes
on. Here Naulu masses his heaviest formations and wins his greatest
victories. Ukiukiu grows weak toward late afternoon, which is the way
of all trade-winds, and is driven backward by Naulu. Naulu’s
generalship is excellent. All day he has been gathering and packing
away immense reserves. As the afternoon draws on, he welds them into a
solid column, sharp-pointed, miles in length, a mile in width, and
hundreds of feet thick. This column he slowly thrusts forward into the
broad battle-front of Ukiukiu, and slowly and surely Ukiukiu, weakening
fast, is split asunder. But it is not all bloodless. At times Ukiukiu
struggles wildly, and with fresh accessions of strength from the
limitless north-east, smashes away half a mile at a time of Naulu’s
column and sweeps it off and away toward West Maui. Sometimes, when the
two charging armies meet end-on, a tremendous perpendicular whirl
results, the cloud-masses, locked together, mounting thousands of feet
into the air and turning over and over. A favourite device of Ukiukiu
is to send a low, squat formation, densely packed, forward along the
ground and under Naulu. When Ukiukiu is under, he proceeds to buck.
Naulu’s mighty middle gives to the blow and bends upward, but usually
he turns the attacking column back upon itself and sets it milling. And
all the while the ragged little skirmishers, stray and detached, sneak
through the trees and canyons, crawl along and through the grass, and
surprise one another with unexpected leaps and rushes; while above, far
above, serene and lonely in the rays of the setting sun, Haleakala
looks down upon the conflict. And so, the night. But in the morning,
after the fashion of trade-winds, Ukiukiu gathers strength and sends
the hosts of Naulu rolling back in confusion and rout. And one day is
like another day in the battle of the clouds, where Ukiukiu and Naulu
strive eternally on the slopes of Haleakala.

Again in the morning, it was boots and saddles, cow-boys, and
packhorses, and the climb to the top began. One packhorse carried
twenty gallons of water, slung in five-gallon bags on either side; for
water is precious and rare in the crater itself, in spite of the fact
that several miles to the north and east of the crater-rim more rain
comes down than in any other place in the world. The way led upward
across countless lava flows, without regard for trails, and never have
I seen horses with such perfect footing as that of the thirteen that
composed our outfit. They climbed or dropped down perpendicular places
with the sureness and coolness of mountain goats, and never a horse
fell or baulked.

There is a familiar and strange illusion experienced by all who climb
isolated mountains. The higher one climbs, the more of the earth’s
surface becomes visible, and the effect of this is that the horizon
seems up-hill from the observer. This illusion is especially notable on
Haleakala, for the old volcano rises directly from the sea without
buttresses or connecting ranges. In consequence, as fast as we climbed
up the grim slope of Haleakala, still faster did Haleakala, ourselves,
and all about us, sink down into the centre of what appeared a profound
abyss. Everywhere, far above us, towered the horizon. The ocean sloped
down from the horizon to us. The higher we climbed, the deeper did we
seem to sink down, the farther above us shone the horizon, and the
steeper pitched the grade up to that horizontal line where sky and
ocean met. It was weird and unreal, and vagrant thoughts of Simm’s Hole
and of the volcano through which Jules Verne journeyed to the centre of
the earth flitted through one’s mind.

And then, when at last we reached the summit of that monster mountain,
which summit was like the bottom of an inverted cone situated in the
centre of an awful cosmic pit, we found that we were at neither top nor
bottom. Far above us was the heaven-towering horizon, and far beneath
us, where the top of the mountain should have been, was a deeper deep,
the great crater, the House of the Sun. Twenty-three miles around
stretched the dizzy walls of the crater. We stood on the edge of the
nearly vertical western wall, and the floor of the crater lay nearly
half a mile beneath. This floor, broken by lava-flows and cinder-cones,
was as red and fresh and uneroded as if it were but yesterday that the
fires went out. The cinder-cones, the smallest over four hundred feet
in height and the largest over nine hundred, seemed no more than puny
little sand-hills, so mighty was the magnitude of the setting. Two
gaps, thousands of feet deep, broke the rim of the crater, and through
these Ukiukiu vainly strove to drive his fleecy herds of trade-wind
clouds. As fast as they advanced through the gaps, the heat of the
crater dissipated them into thin air, and though they advanced always,
they got nowhere.

It was a scene of vast bleakness and desolation, stern, forbidding,
fascinating. We gazed down upon a place of fire and earthquake. The
tie-ribs of earth lay bare before us. It was a workshop of nature still
cluttered with the raw beginnings of world-making. Here and there great
dikes of primordial rock had thrust themselves up from the bowels of
earth, straight through the molten surface-ferment that had evidently
cooled only the other day. It was all unreal and unbelievable. Looking
upward, far above us (in reality beneath us) floated the cloud-battle
of Ukiukiu and Naulu. And higher up the slope of the seeming abyss,
above the cloud-battle, in the air and sky, hung the islands of Lanai
and Molokai. Across the crater, to the south-east, still apparently
looking upward, we saw ascending, first, the turquoise sea, then the
white surf-line of the shore of Hawaii; above that the belt of
trade-clouds, and next, eighty miles away, rearing their stupendous
hulks out of the azure sky, tipped with snow, wreathed with cloud,
trembling like a mirage, the peaks of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa hung
poised on the wall of heaven.

It is told that long ago, one Maui, the son of Hina, lived on what is
now known as West Maui. His mother, Hina, employed her time in the
making of _kapas_. She must have made them at night, for her days were
occupied in trying to dry the _kapas_. Each morning, and all morning,
she toiled at spreading them out in the sun. But no sooner were they
out, than she began taking them in, in order to have them all under
shelter for the night. For know that the days were shorter then than
now. Maui watched his mother’s futile toil and felt sorry for her. He
decided to do something—oh, no, not to help her hang out and take in
the _kapas_. He was too clever for that. His idea was to make the sun
go slower. Perhaps he was the first Hawaiian astronomer. At any rate,
he took a series of observations of the sun from various parts of the
island. His conclusion was that the sun’s path was directly across
Haleakala. Unlike Joshua, he stood in no need of divine assistance. He
gathered a huge quantity of coconuts, from the fibre of which he
braided a stout cord, and in one end of which he made a noose, even as
the cow-boys of Haleakala do to this day. Next he climbed into the
House of the Sun and laid in wait. When the sun came tearing along the
path, bent on completing its journey in the shortest time possible, the
valiant youth threw his lariat around one of the sun’s largest and
strongest beams. He made the sun slow down some; also, he broke the
beam short off. And he kept on roping and breaking off beams till the
sun said it was willing to listen to reason. Maui set forth his terms
of peace, which the sun accepted, agreeing to go more slowly
thereafter. Wherefore Hina had ample time in which to dry her _kapas_,
and the days are longer than they used to be, which last is quite in
accord with the teachings of modern astronomy.

We had a lunch of jerked beef and hard _poi_ in a stone corral, used of
old time for the night-impounding of cattle being driven across the
island. Then we skirted the rim for half a mile and began the descent
into the crater. Twenty-five hundred feet beneath lay the floor, and
down a steep slope of loose volcanic cinders we dropped, the
sure-footed horses slipping and sliding, but always keeping their feet.
The black surface of the cinders, when broken by the horses’ hoofs,
turned to a yellow ochre dust, virulent in appearance and acid of
taste, that arose in clouds. There was a gallop across a level stretch
to the mouth of a convenient blow-hole, and then the descent continued
in clouds of volcanic dust, winding in and out among cinder-cones,
brick-red, old rose, and purplish black of colour. Above us, higher and
higher, towered the crater-walls, while we journeyed on across
innumerable lava-flows, turning and twisting a devious way among the
adamantine billows of a petrified sea. Saw-toothed waves of lava vexed
the surface of this weird ocean, while on either hand arose jagged
crests and spiracles of fantastic shape. Our way led on past a
bottomless pit and along and over the main stream of the latest
lava-flow for seven miles.

At the lower end of the crater was our camping spot, in a small grove
of _olapa_ and _kolea_ trees, tucked away in a corner of the crater at
the base of walls that rose perpendicularly fifteen hundred feet. Here
was pasturage for the horses, but no water, and first we turned aside
and picked our way across a mile of lava to a known water-hole in a
crevice in the crater-wall. The water-hole was empty. But on climbing
fifty feet up the crevice, a pool was found containing half a dozen
barrels of water. A pail was carried up, and soon a steady stream of
the precious liquid was running down the rock and filling the lower
pool, while the cow-boys below were busy fighting the horses back, for
there was room for one only to drink at a time. Then it was on to camp
at the foot of the wall, up which herds of wild goats scrambled and
blatted, while the tent arose to the sound of rifle-firing. Jerked
beef, hard _poi_, and broiled kid were the menu. Over the crest of the
crater, just above our heads, rolled a sea of clouds, driven on by
Ukiukiu. Though this sea rolled over the crest unceasingly, it never
blotted out nor dimmed the moon, for the heat of the crater dissolved
the clouds as fast as they rolled in. Through the moonlight, attracted
by the camp-fire, came the crater cattle to peer and challenge. They
were rolling fat, though they rarely drank water, the morning dew on
the grass taking its place. It was because of this dew that the tent
made a welcome bedchamber, and we fell asleep to the chanting of
_hulas_ by the unwearied Hawaiian cow-boys, in whose veins, no doubt,
ran the blood of Maui, their valiant forebear.

The camera cannot do justice to the House of the Sun. The sublimated
chemistry of photography may not lie, but it certainly does not tell
all the truth. The Koolau Gap may be faithfully reproduced, just as it
impinged on the retina of the camera, yet in the resulting picture the
gigantic scale of things would be missing. Those walls that seem
several hundred feet in height are almost as many thousand; that
entering wedge of cloud is a mile and a half wide in the gap itself,
while beyond the gap it is a veritable ocean; and that foreground of
cinder-cone and volcanic ash, mushy and colourless in appearance, is in
truth gorgeous-hued in brick-red, terra-cotta rose, yellow ochre, and
purplish black. Also, words are a vain thing and drive to despair. To
say that a crater-wall is two thousand feet high is to say just
precisely that it is two thousand feet high; but there is a vast deal
more to that crater-wall than a mere statistic. The sun is ninety-three
millions of miles distant, but to mortal conception the adjoining
county is farther away. This frailty of the human brain is hard on the
sun. It is likewise hard on the House of the Sun. Haleakala has a
message of beauty and wonder for the human soul that cannot be
delivered by proxy. Kolikoli is six hours from Kahului; Kahului is a
night’s run from Honolulu; Honolulu is six days from San Francisco; and
there you are.

We climbed the crater-walls, put the horses over impossible places,
rolled stones, and shot wild goats. I did not get any goats. I was too
busy rolling stones. One spot in particular I remember, where we
started a stone the size of a horse. It began the descent easy enough,
rolling over, wobbling, and threatening to stop; but in a few minutes
it was soaring through the air two hundred feet at a jump. It grew
rapidly smaller until it struck a slight slope of volcanic sand, over
which it darted like a startled jackrabbit, kicking up behind it a tiny
trail of yellow dust. Stone and dust diminished in size, until some of
the party said the stone had stopped. That was because they could not
see it any longer. It had vanished into the distance beyond their ken.
Others saw it rolling farther on—I know I did; and it is my firm
conviction that that stone is still rolling.

Our last day in the crater, Ukiukiu gave us a taste of his strength. He
smashed Naulu back all along the line, filled the House of the Sun to
overflowing with clouds, and drowned us out. Our rain-gauge was a pint
cup under a tiny hole in the tent. That last night of storm and rain
filled the cup, and there was no way of measuring the water that
spilled over into the blankets. With the rain-gauge out of business
there was no longer any reason for remaining; so we broke camp in the
wet-gray of dawn, and plunged eastward across the lava to the Kaupo
Gap. East Maui is nothing more or less than the vast lava stream that
flowed long ago through the Kaupo Gap; and down this stream we picked
our way from an altitude of six thousand five hundred feet to the sea.
This was a day’s work in itself for the horses; but never were there
such horses. Safe in the bad places, never rushing, never losing their
heads, as soon as they found a trail wide and smooth enough to run on,
they ran. There was no stopping them until the trail became bad again,
and then they stopped of themselves. Continuously, for days, they had
performed the hardest kind of work, and fed most of the time on grass
foraged by themselves at night while we slept, and yet that day they
covered twenty-eight leg-breaking miles and galloped into Hana like a
bunch of colts. Also, there were several of them, reared in the dry
region on the leeward side of Haleakala, that had never worn shoes in
all their lives. Day after day, and all day long, unshod, they had
travelled over the sharp lava, with the extra weight of a man on their
backs, and their hoofs were in better condition than those of the shod
horses.

The scenery between Vieiras’s (where the Kaupo Gap empties into the
sea) and Lana, which we covered in half a day, is well worth a week or
month; but, wildly beautiful as it is, it becomes pale and small in
comparison with the wonderland that lies beyond the rubber plantations
between Hana and the Honomanu Gulch. Two days were required to cover
this marvellous stretch, which lies on the windward side of Haleakala.
The people who dwell there call it the “ditch country,” an
unprepossessing name, but it has no other. Nobody else ever comes
there. Nobody else knows anything about it. With the exception of a
handful of men, whom business has brought there, nobody has heard of
the ditch country of Maui. Now a ditch is a ditch, assumably muddy, and
usually traversing uninteresting and monotonous landscapes. But the
Nahiku Ditch is not an ordinary ditch. The windward side of Haleakala
is serried by a thousand precipitous gorges, down which rush as many
torrents, each torrent of which achieves a score of cascades and
waterfalls before it reaches the sea. More rain comes down here than in
any other region in the world. In 1904 the year’s downpour was four
hundred and twenty inches. Water means sugar, and sugar is the backbone
of the territory of Hawaii, wherefore the Nahiku Ditch, which is not a
ditch, but a chain of tunnels. The water travels underground, appearing
only at intervals to leap a gorge, travelling high in the air on a
giddy flume and plunging into and through the opposing mountain. This
magnificent waterway is called a “ditch,” and with equal
appropriateness can Cleopatra’s barge be called a box-car.

There are no carriage roads through the ditch country, and before the
ditch was built, or bored, rather, there was no horse-trail. Hundreds
of inches of rain annually, on fertile soil, under a tropic sun, means
a steaming jungle of vegetation. A man, on foot, cutting his way
through, might advance a mile a day, but at the end of a week he would
be a wreck, and he would have to crawl hastily back if he wanted to get
out before the vegetation overran the passage way he had cut.
O’Shaughnessy was the daring engineer who conquered the jungle and the
gorges, ran the ditch and made the horse-trail. He built enduringly, in
concrete and masonry, and made one of the most remarkable water-farms
in the world. Every little runlet and dribble is harvested and conveyed
by subterranean channels to the main ditch. But so heavily does it rain
at times that countless spillways let the surplus escape to the sea.

The horse-trail is not very wide. Like the engineer who built it, it
dares anything. Where the ditch plunges through the mountain, it climbs
over; and where the ditch leaps a gorge on a flume, the horse-trail
takes advantage of the ditch and crosses on top of the flume. That
careless trail thinks nothing of travelling up or down the faces of
precipices. It gouges its narrow way out of the wall, dodging around
waterfalls or passing under them where they thunder down in white fury;
while straight overhead the wall rises hundreds of feet, and straight
beneath it sinks a thousand. And those marvellous mountain horses are
as unconcerned as the trail. They fox-trot along it as a matter of
course, though the footing is slippery with rain, and they will gallop
with their hind feet slipping over the edge if you let them. I advise
only those with steady nerves and cool heads to tackle the Nahiku Ditch
trail. One of our cow-boys was noted as the strongest and bravest on
the big ranch. He had ridden mountain horses all his life on the rugged
western slopes of Haleakala. He was first in the horse-breaking; and
when the others hung back, as a matter of course, he would go in to
meet a wild bull in the cattle-pen. He had a reputation. But he had
never ridden over the Nahiku Ditch. It was there he lost his
reputation. When he faced the first flume, spanning a hair-raising
gorge, narrow, without railings, with a bellowing waterfall above,
another below, and directly beneath a wild cascade, the air filled with
driving spray and rocking to the clamour and rush of sound and
motion—well, that cow-boy dismounted from his horse, explained briefly
that he had a wife and two children, and crossed over on foot, leading
the horse behind him.

The only relief from the flumes was the precipices; and the only relief
from the precipices was the flumes, except where the ditch was far
under ground, in which case we crossed one horse and rider at a time,
on primitive log-bridges that swayed and teetered and threatened to
carry away. I confess that at first I rode such places with my feet
loose in the stirrups, and that on the sheer walls I saw to it, by a
definite, conscious act of will, that the foot in the outside stirrup,
overhanging the thousand feet of fall, was exceedingly loose. I say “at
first”; for, as in the crater itself we quickly lost our conception of
magnitude, so, on the Nahiku Ditch, we quickly lost our apprehension of
depth. The ceaseless iteration of height and depth produced a state of
consciousness in which height and depth were accepted as the ordinary
conditions of existence; and from the horse’s back to look sheer down
four hundred or five hundred feet became quite commonplace and
non-productive of thrills. And as carelessly as the trail and the
horses, we swung along the dizzy heights and ducked around or through
the waterfalls.

And such a ride! Falling water was everywhere. We rode above the
clouds, under the clouds, and through the clouds! and every now and
then a shaft of sunshine penetrated like a search-light to the depths
yawning beneath us, or flashed upon some pinnacle of the crater-rim
thousands of feet above. At every turn of the trail a waterfall or a
dozen waterfalls, leaping hundreds of feet through the air, burst upon
our vision. At our first night’s camp, in the Keanae Gulch, we counted
thirty-two waterfalls from a single viewpoint. The vegetation ran riot
over that wild land. There were forests of koa and kolea trees, and
candlenut trees; and then there were the trees called ohia-ai, which
bore red mountain apples, mellow and juicy and most excellent to eat.
Wild bananas grew everywhere, clinging to the sides of the gorges, and,
overborne by their great bunches of ripe fruit, falling across the
trail and blocking the way. And over the forest surged a sea of green
life, the climbers of a thousand varieties, some that floated airily,
in lacelike filaments, from the tallest branches others that coiled and
wound about the trees like huge serpents; and one, the ei-ei, that was
for all the world like a climbing palm, swinging on a thick stem from
branch to branch and tree to tree and throttling the supports whereby
it climbed. Through the sea of green, lofty tree-ferns thrust their
great delicate fronds, and the lehua flaunted its scarlet blossoms.
Underneath the climbers, in no less profusion, grew the warm-coloured,
strangely-marked plants that in the United States one is accustomed to
seeing preciously conserved in hot-houses. In fact, the ditch country
of Maui is nothing more nor less than a huge conservatory. Every
familiar variety of fern flourishes, and more varieties that are
unfamiliar, from the tiniest maidenhair to the gross and voracious
staghorn, the latter the terror of the woodsmen, interlacing with
itself in tangled masses five or six feet deep and covering acres.

Never was there such a ride. For two days it lasted, when we emerged
into rolling country, and, along an actual wagon-road, came home to the
ranch at a gallop. I know it was cruel to gallop the horses after such
a long, hard journey; but we blistered our hands in vain effort to hold
them in. That’s the sort of horses they grow on Haleakala. At the ranch
there was great festival of cattle-driving, branding, and
horse-breaking. Overhead Ukiukiu and Naulu battled valiantly, and far
above, in the sunshine, towered the mighty summit of Haleakala.




CHAPTER IX
A PACIFIC TRAVERSE


_Sandwich Islands to Tahiti_.—_There is great difficulty in making this
passage across the trades_. _The whalers and all others speak with
great doubt of fetching Tahiti from the Sandwich islands_. _Capt. Bruce
says that a vessel should keep to the northward until she gets a start
of wind before bearing for her destination_. _In his passage between
them in November_, 1837, _he had no variables near the line in coming
south_, _and never could make easting on either tack_, _though he
endeavoured by every means to do so_.

So say the sailing directions for the South Pacific Ocean; and that is
all they say. There is not a word more to help the weary voyager in
making this long traverse—nor is there any word at all concerning the
passage from Hawaii to the Marquesas, which lie some eight hundred
miles to the northeast of Tahiti and which are the more difficult to
reach by just that much. The reason for the lack of directions is, I
imagine, that no voyager is supposed to make himself weary by
attempting so impossible a traverse. But the impossible did not deter
the _Snark_,—principally because of the fact that we did not read that
particular little paragraph in the sailing directions until after we
had started. We sailed from Hilo, Hawaii, on October 7, and arrived at
Nuka-hiva, in the Marquesas, on December 6. The distance was two
thousand miles as the crow flies, while we actually travelled at least
four thousand miles to accomplish it, thus proving for once and for
ever that the shortest distance between two points is not always a
straight line. Had we headed directly for the Marquesas, we might have
travelled five or six thousand miles.

Upon one thing we were resolved: we would not cross the Line west of
130° west longitude. For here was the problem. To cross the Line to the
west of that point, if the southeast trades were well around to the
southeast, would throw us so far to leeward of the Marquesas that a
head-beat would be maddeningly impossible. Also, we had to remember the
equatorial current, which moves west at a rate of anywhere from twelve
to seventy-five miles a day. A pretty pickle, indeed, to be to leeward
of our destination with such a current in our teeth. No; not a minute,
nor a second, west of 130° west longitude would we cross the Line. But
since the southeast trades were to be expected five or six degrees
north of the Line (which, if they were well around to the southeast or
south-southeast, would necessitate our sliding off toward
south-southwest), we should have to hold to the eastward, north of the
Line, and north of the southeast trades, until we gained at least 128°
west longitude.

I have forgotten to mention that the seventy-horse-power gasolene
engine, as usual, was not working, and that we could depend upon wind
alone. Neither was the launch engine working. And while I am about it,
I may as well confess that the five-horse-power, which ran the lights,
fans, and pumps, was also on the sick-list. A striking title for a book
haunts me, waking and sleeping. I should like to write that book some
day and to call it “Around the World with Three Gasolene Engines and a
Wife.” But I am afraid I shall not write it, for fear of hurting the
feelings of some of the young gentlemen of San Francisco, Honolulu, and
Hilo, who learned their trades at the expense of the _Snark’s_ engines.

It looked easy on paper. Here was Hilo and there was our objective,
128° west longitude. With the northeast trade blowing we could travel a
straight line between the two points, and even slack our sheets off a
goodly bit. But one of the chief troubles with the trades is that one
never knows just where he will pick them up and just in what direction
they will be blowing. We picked up the northeast trade right outside of
Hilo harbour, but the miserable breeze was away around into the east.
Then there was the north equatorial current setting westward like a
mighty river. Furthermore, a small boat, by the wind and bucking into a
big headsea, does not work to advantage. She jogs up and down and gets
nowhere. Her sails are full and straining, every little while she
presses her lee-rail under, she flounders, and bumps, and splashes, and
that is all. Whenever she begins to gather way, she runs ker-chug into
a big mountain of water and is brought to a standstill. So, with the
_Snark_, the resultant of her smallness, of the trade around into the
east, and of the strong equatorial current, was a long sag south. Oh,
she did not go quite south. But the easting she made was distressing.
On October 11, she made forty miles easting; October 12, fifteen miles;
October 13, no easting; October 14, thirty miles; October 15,
twenty-three miles; October 16, eleven miles; and on October 17, she
actually went to the westward four miles. Thus, in a week she made one
hundred and fifteen miles easting, which was equivalent to sixteen
miles a day. But, between the longitude of Hilo and 128° west longitude
is a difference of twenty-seven degrees, or, roughly, sixteen hundred
miles. At sixteen miles a day, one hundred days would be required to
accomplish this distance. And even then, our objective, 128° west
longitude, was five degrees north of the Line, while Nuka-hiva, in the
Marquesas, lay nine degrees south of the Line and twelve degrees to the
west!

There remained only one thing to do—to work south out of the trade and
into the variables. It is true that Captain Bruce found no variables on
his traverse, and that he “never could make easting on either tack.” It
was the variables or nothing with us, and we prayed for better luck
than he had had. The variables constitute the belt of ocean lying
between the trades and the doldrums, and are conjectured to be the
draughts of heated air which rise in the doldrums, flow high in the air
counter to the trades, and gradually sink down till they fan the
surface of the ocean where they are found. And they are found where
they are found; for they are wedged between the trades and the
doldrums, which same shift their territory from day to day and month to
month.

We found the variables in 11° north latitude, and 11° north latitude we
hugged jealously. To the south lay the doldrums. To the north lay the
northeast trade that refused to blow from the northeast. The days came
and went, and always they found the _Snark_ somewhere near the eleventh
parallel. The variables were truly variable. A light head-wind would
die away and leave us rolling in a calm for forty-eight hours. Then a
light head-wind would spring up, blow for three hours, and leave us
rolling in another calm for forty-eight hours. Then—hurrah!—the wind
would come out of the west, fresh, beautifully fresh, and send the
_Snark_ along, wing and wing, her wake bubbling, the log-line straight
astern. At the end of half an hour, while we were preparing to set the
spinnaker, with a few sickly gasps the wind would die away. And so it
went. We wagered optimistically on every favourable fan of air that
lasted over five minutes; but it never did any good. The fans faded out
just the same.

But there were exceptions. In the variables, if you wait long enough,
something is bound to happen, and we were so plentifully stocked with
food and water that we could afford to wait. On October 26, we actually
made one hundred and three miles of easting, and we talked about it for
days afterwards. Once we caught a moderate gale from the south, which
blew itself out in eight hours, but it helped us to seventy-one miles
of easting in that particular twenty-four hours. And then, just as it
was expiring, the wind came straight out from the north (the directly
opposite quarter), and fanned us along over another degree of easting.

In years and years no sailing vessel has attempted this traverse, and
we found ourselves in the midst of one of the loneliest of the Pacific
solitudes. In the sixty days we were crossing it we sighted no sail,
lifted no steamer’s smoke above the horizon. A disabled vessel could
drift in this deserted expanse for a dozen generations, and there would
be no rescue. The only chance of rescue would be from a vessel like the
_Snark_, and the _Snark_ happened to be there principally because of
the fact that the traverse had been begun before the particular
paragraph in the sailing directions had been read. Standing upright on
deck, a straight line drawn from the eye to the horizon would measure
three miles and a half. Thus, seven miles was the diameter of the
circle of the sea in which we had our centre. Since we remained always
in the centre, and since we constantly were moving in some direction,
we looked upon many circles. But all circles looked alike. No tufted
islets, gray headlands, nor glistening patches of white canvas ever
marred the symmetry of that unbroken curve. Clouds came and went,
rising up over the rim of the circle, flowing across the space of it,
and spilling away and down across the opposite rim.

The world faded as the procession of the weeks marched by. The world
faded until at last there ceased to be any world except the little
world of the _Snark_, freighted with her seven souls and floating on
the expanse of the waters. Our memories of the world, the great world,
became like dreams of former lives we had lived somewhere before we
came to be born on the _Snark_. After we had been out of fresh
vegetables for some time, we mentioned such things in much the same way
I have heard my father mention the vanished apples of his boyhood. Man
is a creature of habit, and we on the _Snark_ had got the habit of the
_Snark_. Everything about her and aboard her was as a matter of course,
and anything different would have been an irritation and an offence.

There was no way by which the great world could intrude. Our bell rang
the hours, but no caller ever rang it. There were no guests to dinner,
no telegrams, no insistent telephone jangles invading our privacy. We
had no engagements to keep, no trains to catch, and there were no
morning newspapers over which to waste time in learning what was
happening to our fifteen hundred million other fellow-creatures.

But it was not dull. The affairs of our little world had to be
regulated, and, unlike the great world, our world had to be steered in
its journey through space. Also, there were cosmic disturbances to be
encountered and baffled, such as do not afflict the big earth in its
frictionless orbit through the windless void. And we never knew, from
moment to moment, what was going to happen next. There were spice and
variety enough and to spare. Thus, at four in the morning, I relieve
Hermann at the wheel.

“East-northeast,” he gives me the course. “She’s eight points off, but
she ain’t steering.”

Small wonder. The vessel does not exist that can be steered in so
absolute a calm.

“I had a breeze a little while ago—maybe it will come back again,”
Hermann says hopefully, ere he starts forward to the cabin and his
bunk.

The mizzen is in and fast furled. In the night, what of the roll and
the absence of wind, it had made life too hideous to be permitted to go
on rasping at the mast, smashing at the tackles, and buffeting the
empty air into hollow outbursts of sound. But the big mainsail is still
on, and the staysail, jib, and flying-jib are snapping and slashing at
their sheets with every roll. Every star is out. Just for luck I put
the wheel hard over in the opposite direction to which it had been left
by Hermann, and I lean back and gaze up at the stars. There is nothing
else for me to do. There is nothing to be done with a sailing vessel
rolling in a stark calm.

Then I feel a fan on my cheek, faint, so faint, that I can just sense
it ere it is gone. But another comes, and another, until a real and
just perceptible breeze is blowing. How the _Snark’s_ sails manage to
feel it is beyond me, but feel it they do, as she does as well, for the
compass card begins slowly to revolve in the binnacle. In reality, it
is not revolving at all. It is held by terrestrial magnetism in one
place, and it is the _Snark_ that is revolving, pivoted upon that
delicate cardboard device that floats in a closed vessel of alcohol.

So the _Snark_ comes back on her course. The breath increases to a tiny
puff. The _Snark_ feels the weight of it and actually heels over a
trifle. There is flying scud overhead, and I notice the stars being
blotted out. Walls of darkness close in upon me, so that, when the last
star is gone, the darkness is so near that it seems I can reach out and
touch it on every side. When I lean toward it, I can feel it loom
against my face. Puff follows puff, and I am glad the mizzen is furled.
Phew! that was a stiff one! The _Snark_ goes over and down until her
lee-rail is buried and the whole Pacific Ocean is pouring in. Four or
five of these gusts make me wish that the jib and flying-jib were in.
The sea is picking up, the gusts are growing stronger and more
frequent, and there is a splatter of wet in the air. There is no use in
attempting to gaze to windward. The wall of blackness is within arm’s
length. Yet I cannot help attempting to see and gauge the blows that
are being struck at the _Snark_. There is something ominous and
menacing up there to windward, and I have a feeling that if I look long
enough and strong enough, I shall divine it. Futile feeling. Between
two gusts I leave the wheel and run forward to the cabin companionway,
where I light matches and consult the barometer. “29-90” it reads. That
sensitive instrument refuses to take notice of the disturbance which is
humming with a deep, throaty voice in the rigging. I get back to the
wheel just in time to meet another gust, the strongest yet. Well,
anyway, the wind is abeam and the _Snark_ is on her course, eating up
easting. That at least is well.

The jib and flying-jib bother me, and I wish they were in. She would
make easier weather of it, and less risky weather likewise. The wind
snorts, and stray raindrops pelt like birdshot. I shall certainly have
to call all hands, I conclude; then conclude the next instant to hang
on a little longer. Maybe this is the end of it, and I shall have
called them for nothing. It is better to let them sleep. I hold the
_Snark_ down to her task, and from out of the darkness, at right
angles, comes a deluge of rain accompanied by shrieking wind. Then
everything eases except the blackness, and I rejoice in that I have not
called the men.

No sooner does the wind ease than the sea picks up. The combers are
breaking now, and the boat is tossing like a cork. Then out of the
blackness the gusts come harder and faster than before. If only I knew
what was up there to windward in the blackness! The _Snark_ is making
heavy weather of it, and her lee-rail is buried oftener than not. More
shrieks and snorts of wind. Now, if ever, is the time to call the men.
I _will_ call them, I resolve. Then there is a burst of rain, a
slackening of the wind, and I do not call. But it is rather lonely,
there at the wheel, steering a little world through howling blackness.
It is quite a responsibility to be all alone on the surface of a little
world in time of stress, doing the thinking for its sleeping
inhabitants. I recoil from the responsibility as more gusts begin to
strike and as a sea licks along the weather rail and splashes over into
the cockpit. The salt water seems strangely warm to my body and is shot
through with ghostly nodules of phosphorescent light. I shall surely
call all hands to shorten sail. Why should they sleep? I am a fool to
have any compunctions in the matter. My intellect is arrayed against my
heart. It was my heart that said, “Let them sleep.” Yes, but it was my
intellect that backed up my heart in that judgment. Let my intellect
then reverse the judgment; and, while I am speculating as to what
particular entity issued that command to my intellect, the gusts die
away. Solicitude for mere bodily comfort has no place in practical
seamanship, I conclude sagely; but study the feel of the next series of
gusts and do not call the men. After all, it _is_ my intellect, behind
everything, procrastinating, measuring its knowledge of what the
_Snark_ can endure against the blows being struck at her, and waiting
the call of all hands against the striking of still severer blows.

Daylight, gray and violent, steals through the cloud-pall and shows a
foaming sea that flattens under the weight of recurrent and increasing
squalls. Then comes the rain, filling the windy valleys of the sea with
milky smoke and further flattening the waves, which but wait for the
easement of wind and rain to leap more wildly than before. Come the men
on deck, their sleep out, and among them Hermann, his face on the broad
grin in appreciation of the breeze of wind I have picked up. I turn the
wheel over to Warren and start to go below, pausing on the way to
rescue the galley stovepipe which has gone adrift. I am barefooted, and
my toes have had an excellent education in the art of clinging; but, as
the rail buries itself in a green sea, I suddenly sit down on the
streaming deck. Hermann good-naturedly elects to question my selection
of such a spot. Then comes the next roll, and he sits down, suddenly,
and without premeditation. The _Snark_ heels over and down, the rail
takes it green, and Hermann and I, clutching the precious stove-pipe,
are swept down into the lee-scuppers. After that I finish my journey
below, and while changing my clothes grin with satisfaction—the _Snark_
is making easting.

No, it is not all monotony. When we had worried along our easting to
126° west longitude, we left the variables and headed south through the
doldrums, where was much calm weather and where, taking advantage of
every fan of air, we were often glad to make a score of miles in as
many hours. And yet, on such a day, we might pass through a dozen
squalls and be surrounded by dozens more. And every squall was to be
regarded as a bludgeon capable of crushing the _Snark_. We were struck
sometimes by the centres and sometimes by the sides of these squalls,
and we never knew just where or how we were to be hit. The squall that
rose up, covering half the heavens, and swept down upon us, as likely
as not split into two squalls which passed us harmlessly on either side
while the tiny, innocent looking squall that appeared to carry no more
than a hogshead of water and a pound of wind, would abruptly assume
cyclopean proportions, deluging us with rain and overwhelming us with
wind. Then there were treacherous squalls that went boldly astern and
sneaked back upon us from a mile to leeward. Again, two squalls would
tear along, one on each side of us, and we would get a fillip from each
of them. Now a gale certainly grows tiresome after a few hours, but
squalls never. The thousandth squall in one’s experience is as
interesting as the first one, and perhaps a bit more so. It is the tyro
who has no apprehension of them. The man of a thousand squalls respects
a squall. He knows what they are.

It was in the doldrums that our most exciting event occurred. On
November 20, we discovered that through an accident we had lost over
one-half of the supply of fresh water that remained to us. Since we
were at that time forty-three days out from Hilo, our supply of fresh
water was not large. To lose over half of it was a catastrophe. On
close allowance, the remnant of water we possessed would last twenty
days. But we were in the doldrums; there was no telling where the
southeast trades were, nor where we would pick them up.

The handcuffs were promptly put upon the pump, and once a day the water
was portioned out. Each of us received a quart for personal use, and
eight quarts were given to the cook. Enters now the psychology of the
situation. No sooner had the discovery of the water shortage been made
than I, for one, was afflicted with a burning thirst. It seemed to me
that I had never been so thirsty in my life. My little quart of water I
could easily have drunk in one draught, and to refrain from doing so
required a severe exertion of will. Nor was I alone in this. All of us
talked water, thought water, and dreamed water when we slept. We
examined the charts for possible islands to which to run in extremity,
but there were no such islands. The Marquesas were the nearest, and
they were the other side of the Line, and of the doldrums, too, which
made it even worse. We were in 3° north latitude, while the Marquesas
were 9° south latitude—a difference of over a thousand miles.
Furthermore, the Marquesas lay some fourteen degrees to the west of our
longitude. A pretty pickle for a handful of creatures sweltering on the
ocean in the heat of tropic calms.

We rigged lines on either side between the main and mizzen riggings. To
these we laced the big deck awning, hoisting it up aft with a sailing
pennant so that any rain it might collect would run forward where it
could be caught. Here and there squalls passed across the circle of the
sea. All day we watched them, now to port or starboard, and again ahead
or astern. But never one came near enough to wet us. In the afternoon a
big one bore down upon us. It spread out across the ocean as it
approached, and we could see it emptying countless thousands of gallons
into the salt sea. Extra attention was paid to the awning and then we
waited. Warren, Martin, and Hermann made a vivid picture. Grouped
together, holding on to the rigging, swaying to the roll, they were
gazing intently at the squall. Strain, anxiety, and yearning were in
every posture of their bodies. Beside them was the dry and empty
awning. But they seemed to grow limp and to droop as the squall broke
in half, one part passing on ahead, the other drawing astern and going
to leeward.

But that night came rain. Martin, whose psychological thirst had
compelled him to drink his quart of water early, got his mouth down to
the lip of the awning and drank the deepest draught I ever have seen
drunk. The precious water came down in bucketfuls and tubfuls, and in
two hours we caught and stored away in the tanks one hundred and twenty
gallons. Strange to say, in all the rest of our voyage to the Marquesas
not another drop of rain fell on board. If that squall had missed us,
the handcuffs would have remained on the pump, and we would have busied
ourselves with utilizing our surplus gasolene for distillation
purposes.

Then there was the fishing. One did not have to go in search of it, for
it was there at the rail. A three-inch steel hook, on the end of a
stout line, with a piece of white rag for bait, was all that was
necessary to catch bonitas weighing from ten to twenty-five pounds.
Bonitas feed on flying-fish, wherefore they are unaccustomed to
nibbling at the hook. They strike as gamely as the gamest fish in the
sea, and their first run is something that no man who has ever caught
them will forget. Also, bonitas are the veriest cannibals. The instant
one is hooked he is attacked by his fellows. Often and often we hauled
them on board with fresh, clean-bitten holes in them the size of
teacups.

One school of bonitas, numbering many thousands, stayed with us day and
night for more than three weeks. Aided by the _Snark_, it was great
hunting; for they cut a swath of destruction through the ocean half a
mile wide and fifteen hundred miles in length. They ranged along
abreast of the _Snark_ on either side, pouncing upon the flying-fish
her forefoot scared up. Since they were continually pursuing astern the
flying-fish that survived for several flights, they were always
overtaking the _Snark_, and at any time one could glance astern and on
the front of a breaking wave see scores of their silvery forms coasting
down just under the surface. When they had eaten their fill, it was
their delight to get in the shadow of the boat, or of her sails, and a
hundred or so were always to be seen lazily sliding along and keeping
cool.

But the poor flying-fish! Pursued and eaten alive by the bonitas and
dolphins, they sought flight in the air, where the swooping seabirds
drove them back into the water. Under heaven there was no refuge for
them. Flying-fish do not play when they essay the air. It is a
life-and-death affair with them. A thousand times a day we could lift
our eyes and see the tragedy played out. The swift, broken circling of
a guny might attract one’s attention. A glance beneath shows the back
of a dolphin breaking the surface in a wild rush. Just in front of its
nose a shimmering palpitant streak of silver shoots from the water into
the air—a delicate, organic mechanism of flight, endowed with
sensation, power of direction, and love of life. The guny swoops for it
and misses, and the flying-fish, gaining its altitude by rising,
kite-like, against the wind, turns in a half-circle and skims off to
leeward, gliding on the bosom of the wind. Beneath it, the wake of the
dolphin shows in churning foam. So he follows, gazing upward with large
eyes at the flashing breakfast that navigates an element other than his
own. He cannot rise to so lofty occasion, but he is a thorough-going
empiricist, and he knows, sooner or later, if not gobbled up by the
guny, that the flying-fish must return to the water. And
then—breakfast. We used to pity the poor winged fish. It was sad to see
such sordid and bloody slaughter. And then, in the night watches, when
a forlorn little flying-fish struck the mainsail and fell gasping and
splattering on the deck, we would rush for it just as eagerly, just as
greedily, just as voraciously, as the dolphins and bonitas. For know
that flying-fish are most toothsome for breakfast. It is always a
wonder to me that such dainty meat does not build dainty tissue in the
bodies of the devourers. Perhaps the dolphins and bonitas are
coarser-fibred because of the high speed at which they drive their
bodies in order to catch their prey. But then again, the flying-fish
drive their bodies at high speed, too.

Sharks we caught occasionally, on large hooks, with chain-swivels, bent
on a length of small rope. And sharks meant pilot-fish, and remoras,
and various sorts of parasitic creatures. Regular man-eaters some of
the sharks proved, tiger-eyed and with twelve rows of teeth,
razor-sharp. By the way, we of the _Snark_ are agreed that we have
eaten many fish that will not compare with baked shark smothered in
tomato dressing. In the calms we occasionally caught a fish called
“haké” by the Japanese cook. And once, on a spoon-hook trolling a
hundred yards astern, we caught a snake-like fish, over three feet in
length and not more than three inches in diameter, with four fangs in
his jaw. He proved the most delicious fish—delicious in meat and
flavour—that we have ever eaten on board.

The most welcome addition to our larder was a green sea-turtle,
weighing a full hundred pounds and appearing on the table most
appetizingly in steaks, soups, and stews, and finally in a wonderful
curry which tempted all hands into eating more rice than was good for
them. The turtle was sighted to windward, calmly sleeping on the
surface in the midst of a huge school of curious dolphins. It was a
deep-sea turtle of a surety, for the nearest land was a thousand miles
away. We put the _Snark_ about and went back for him, Hermann driving
the granes into his head and neck. When hauled aboard, numerous remora
were clinging to his shell, and out of the hollows at the roots of his
flippers crawled several large crabs. It did not take the crew of the
_Snark_ longer than the next meal to reach the unanimous conclusion
that it would willingly put the _Snark_ about any time for a turtle.

But it is the dolphin that is the king of deep-sea fishes. Never is his
colour twice quite the same. Swimming in the sea, an ethereal creature
of palest azure, he displays in that one guise a miracle of colour. But
it is nothing compared with the displays of which he is capable. At one
time he will appear green—pale green, deep green, phosphorescent green;
at another time blue—deep blue, electric blue, all the spectrum of
blue. Catch him on a hook, and he turns to gold, yellow gold, all gold.
Haul him on deck, and he excels the spectrum, passing through
inconceivable shades of blues, greens, and yellows, and then, suddenly,
turning a ghostly white, in the midst of which are bright blue spots,
and you suddenly discover that he is speckled like a trout. Then back
from white he goes, through all the range of colours, finally turning
to a mother-of-pearl.

For those who are devoted to fishing, I can recommend no finer sport
than catching dolphin. Of course, it must be done on a thin line with
reel and pole. A No. 7, O’Shaughnessy tarpon hook is just the thing,
baited with an entire flying-fish. Like the bonita, the dolphin’s fare
consists of flying-fish, and he strikes like lightning at the bait. The
first warning is when the reel screeches and you see the line smoking
out at right angles to the boat. Before you have time to entertain
anxiety concerning the length of your line, the fish rises into the air
in a succession of leaps. Since he is quite certain to be four feet
long or over, the sport of landing so gamey a fish can be realized.
When hooked, he invariably turns golden. The idea of the series of
leaps is to rid himself of the hook, and the man who has made the
strike must be of iron or decadent if his heart does not beat with an
extra flutter when he beholds such gorgeous fish, glittering in golden
mail and shaking itself like a stallion in each mid-air leap. ’Ware
slack! If you don’t, on one of those leaps the hook will be flung out
and twenty feet away. No slack, and away he will go on another run,
culminating in another series of leaps. About this time one begins to
worry over the line, and to wish that he had had nine hundred feet on
the reel originally instead of six hundred. With careful playing the
line can be saved, and after an hour of keen excitement the fish can be
brought to gaff. One such dolphin I landed on the _Snark_ measured four
feet and seven inches.

Hermann caught dolphins more prosaically. A hand-line and a chunk of
shark-meat were all he needed. His hand-line was very thick, but on
more than one occasion it parted and lost the fish. One day a dolphin
got away with a lure of Hermann’s manufacture, to which were lashed
four O’Shaughnessy hooks. Within an hour the same dolphin was landed
with the rod, and on dissecting him the four hooks were recovered. The
dolphins, which remained with us over a month, deserted us north of the
line, and not one was seen during the remainder of the traverse.

So the days passed. There was so much to be done that time never
dragged. Had there been little to do, time could not have dragged with
such wonderful seascapes and cloudscapes—dawns that were like burning
imperial cities under rainbows that arched nearly to the zenith;
sunsets that bathed the purple sea in rivers of rose-coloured light,
flowing from a sun whose diverging, heaven-climbing rays were of the
purest blue. Overside, in the heat of the day, the sea was an azure
satiny fabric, in the depths of which the sunshine focussed in funnels
of light. Astern, deep down, when there was a breeze, bubbled a
procession of milky-turquoise ghosts—the foam flung down by the hull of
the _Snark_ each time she floundered against a sea. At night the wake
was phosphorescent fire, where the medusa slime resented our passing
bulk, while far down could be observed the unceasing flight of comets,
with long, undulating, nebulous tails—caused by the passage of the
bonitas through the resentful medusa slime. And now and again, from out
of the darkness on either hand, just under the surface, larger
phosphorescent organisms flashed up like electric lights, marking
collisions with the careless bonitas skurrying ahead to the good
hunting just beyond our bowsprit.

We made our easting, worked down through the doldrums, and caught a
fresh breeze out of south-by-west. Hauled up by the wind, on such a
slant, we would fetch past the Marquesas far away to the westward. But
the next day, on Tuesday, November 26, in the thick of a heavy squall,
the wind shifted suddenly to the southeast. It was the trade at last.
There were no more squalls, naught but fine weather, a fair wind, and a
whirling log, with sheets slacked off and with spinnaker and mainsail
swaying and bellying on either side. The trade backed more and more,
until it blew out of the northeast, while we steered a steady course to
the southwest. Ten days of this, and on the morning of December 6, at
five o’clock, we sighted land “just where it ought to have been,” dead
ahead. We passed to leeward of Ua-huka, skirted the southern edge of
Nuka-hiva, and that night, in driving squalls and inky darkness, fought
our way in to an anchorage in the narrow bay of Taiohae. The anchor
rumbled down to the blatting of wild goats on the cliffs, and the air
we breathed was heavy with the perfume of flowers. The traverse was
accomplished. Sixty days from land to land, across a lonely sea above
whose horizons never rise the straining sails of ships.




CHAPTER X
TYPEE


To the eastward Ua-huka was being blotted out by an evening rain-squall
that was fast overtaking the _Snark_. But that little craft, her big
spinnaker filled by the southeast trade, was making a good race of it.
Cape Martin, the southeasternmost point of Nuku-hiva, was abeam, and
Comptroller Bay was opening up as we fled past its wide entrance, where
Sail Rock, for all the world like the spritsail of a Columbia River
salmon-boat, was making brave weather of it in the smashing southeast
swell.

“What do you make that out to be?” I asked Hermann, at the wheel.

“A fishing-boat, sir,” he answered after careful scrutiny.

Yet on the chart it was plainly marked, “Sail Rock.”

But we were more interested in the recesses of Comptroller Bay, where
our eyes eagerly sought out the three bights of land and centred on the
midmost one, where the gathering twilight showed the dim walls of a
valley extending inland. How often we had pored over the chart and
centred always on that midmost bight and on the valley it opened—the
Valley of Typee. “Taipi” the chart spelled it, and spelled it
correctly, but I prefer “Typee,” and I shall always spell it “Typee.”
When I was a little boy, I read a book spelled in that manner—Herman
Melville’s “Typee”; and many long hours I dreamed over its pages. Nor
was it all dreaming. I resolved there and then, mightily, come what
would, that when I had gained strength and years, I, too, would voyage
to Typee. For the wonder of the world was penetrating to my tiny
consciousness—the wonder that was to lead me to many lands, and that
leads and never pails. The years passed, but Typee was not forgotten.
Returned to San Francisco from a seven months’ cruise in the North
Pacific, I decided the time had come. The brig _Galilee_ was sailing
for the Marquesas, but her crew was complete and I, who was an
able-seaman before the mast and young enough to be overweeningly proud
of it, was willing to condescend to ship as cabin-boy in order to make
the pilgrimage to Typee. Of course, the _Galilee_ would have sailed
from the Marquesas without me, for I was bent on finding another
Fayaway and another Kory-Kory. I doubt that the captain read desertion
in my eye. Perhaps even the berth of cabin-boy was already filled. At
any rate, I did not get it.

Then came the rush of years, filled brimming with projects,
achievements, and failures; but Typee was not forgotten, and here I was
now, gazing at its misty outlines till the squall swooped down and the
_Snark_ dashed on into the driving smother. Ahead, we caught a glimpse
and took the compass bearing of Sentinel Rock, wreathed with pounding
surf. Then it, too, was effaced by the rain and darkness. We steered
straight for it, trusting to hear the sound of breakers in time to
sheer clear. We had to steer for it. We had naught but a compass
bearing with which to orientate ourselves, and if we missed Sentinel
Rock, we missed Taiohae Bay, and we would have to throw the _Snark_ up
to the wind and lie off and on the whole night—no pleasant prospect for
voyagers weary from a sixty days’ traverse of the vast Pacific
solitude, and land-hungry, and fruit-hungry, and hungry with an
appetite of years for the sweet vale of Typee.

Abruptly, with a roar of sound, Sentinel Rock loomed through the rain
dead ahead. We altered our course, and, with mainsail and spinnaker
bellying to the squall, drove past. Under the lea of the rock the wind
dropped us, and we rolled in an absolute calm. Then a puff of air
struck us, right in our teeth, out of Taiohae Bay. It was in spinnaker,
up mizzen, all sheets by the wind, and we were moving slowly ahead,
heaving the lead and straining our eyes for the fixed red light on the
ruined fort that would give us our bearings to anchorage. The air was
light and baffling, now east, now west, now north, now south; while
from either hand came the roar of unseen breakers. From the looming
cliffs arose the blatting of wild goats, and overhead the first stars
were peeping mistily through the ragged train of the passing squall. At
the end of two hours, having come a mile into the bay, we dropped
anchor in eleven fathoms. And so we came to Taiohae.

In the morning we awoke in fairyland. The _Snark_ rested in a placid
harbour that nestled in a vast amphitheatre, the towering, vine-clad
walls of which seemed to rise directly from the water. Far up, to the
east, we glimpsed the thin line of a trail, visible in one place, where
it scoured across the face of the wall.

“The path by which Toby escaped from Typee!” we cried.

We were not long in getting ashore and astride horses, though the
consummation of our pilgrimage had to be deferred for a day. Two months
at sea, bare-footed all the time, without space in which to exercise
one’s limbs, is not the best preliminary to leather shoes and walking.
Besides, the land had to cease its nauseous rolling before we could
feel fit for riding goat-like horses over giddy trails. So we took a
short ride to break in, and crawled through thick jungle to make the
acquaintance of a venerable moss-grown idol, where had foregathered a
German trader and a Norwegian captain to estimate the weight of said
idol, and to speculate upon depreciation in value caused by sawing him
in half. They treated the old fellow sacrilegiously, digging their
knives into him to see how hard he was and how deep his mossy mantle,
and commanding him to rise up and save them trouble by walking down to
the ship himself. In lieu of which, nineteen Kanakas slung him on a
frame of timbers and toted him to the ship, where, battened down under
hatches, even now he is cleaving the South Pacific Hornward and toward
Europe—the ultimate abiding-place for all good heathen idols, save for
the few in America and one in particular who grins beside me as I
write, and who, barring shipwreck, will grin somewhere in my
neighbourhood until I die. And he will win out. He will be grinning
when I am dust.

Also, as a preliminary, we attended a feast, where one Taiara Tamarii,
the son of an Hawaiian sailor who deserted from a whaleship,
commemorated the death of his Marquesan mother by roasting fourteen
whole hogs and inviting in the village. So we came along, welcomed by a
native herald, a young girl, who stood on a great rock and chanted the
information that the banquet was made perfect by our presence—which
information she extended impartially to every arrival. Scarcely were we
seated, however, when she changed her tune, while the company
manifested intense excitement. Her cries became eager and piercing.
From a distance came answering cries, in men’s voices, which blended
into a wild, barbaric chant that sounded incredibly savage, smacking of
blood and war. Then, through vistas of tropical foliage appeared a
procession of savages, naked save for gaudy loin-cloths. They advanced
slowly, uttering deep guttural cries of triumph and exaltation. Slung
from young saplings carried on their shoulders were mysterious objects
of considerable weight, hidden from view by wrappings of green leaves.

Nothing but pigs, innocently fat and roasted to a turn, were inside
those wrappings, but the men were carrying them into camp in imitation
of old times when they carried in “long-pig.” Now long-pig is not pig.
Long-pig is the Polynesian euphemism for human flesh; and these
descendants of man-eaters, a king’s son at their head, brought in the
pigs to table as of old their grandfathers had brought in their slain
enemies. Every now and then the procession halted in order that the
bearers should have every advantage in uttering particularly ferocious
shouts of victory, of contempt for their enemies, and of gustatory
desire. So Melville, two generations ago, witnessed the bodies of slain
Happar warriors, wrapped in palm-leaves, carried to banquet at the Ti.
At another time, at the Ti, he “observed a curiously carved vessel of
wood,” and on looking into it his eyes “fell upon the disordered
members of a human skeleton, the bones still fresh with moisture, and
with particles of flesh clinging to them here and there.”

Cannibalism has often been regarded as a fairy story by ultracivilized
men who dislike, perhaps, the notion that their own savage forebears
have somewhere in the past been addicted to similar practices. Captain
Cook was rather sceptical upon the subject, until, one day, in a
harbour of New Zealand, he deliberately tested the matter. A native
happened to have brought on board, for sale, a nice, sun-dried head. At
Cook’s orders strips of the flesh were cut away and handed to the
native, who greedily devoured them. To say the least, Captain Cook was
a rather thorough-going empiricist. At any rate, by that act he
supplied one ascertained fact of which science had been badly in need.
Little did he dream of the existence of a certain group of islands,
thousands of miles away, where in subsequent days there would arise a
curious suit at law, when an old chief of Maui would be charged with
defamation of character because he persisted in asserting that his body
was the living repository of Captain Cook’s great toe. It is said that
the plaintiffs failed to prove that the old chief was not the tomb of
the navigator’s great toe, and that the suit was dismissed.

I suppose I shall not have the chance in these degenerate days to see
any long-pig eaten, but at least I am already the possessor of a duly
certified Marquesan calabash, oblong in shape, curiously carved, over a
century old, from which has been drunk the blood of two shipmasters.
One of those captains was a mean man. He sold a decrepit whale-boat, as
good as new what of the fresh white paint, to a Marquesan chief. But no
sooner had the captain sailed away than the whale-boat dropped to
pieces. It was his fortune, some time afterwards, to be wrecked, of all
places, on that particular island. The Marquesan chief was ignorant of
rebates and discounts; but he had a primitive sense of equity and an
equally primitive conception of the economy of nature, and he balanced
the account by eating the man who had cheated him.

We started in the cool dawn for Typee, astride ferocious little
stallions that pawed and screamed and bit and fought one another quite
oblivious of the fragile humans on their backs and of the slippery
boulders, loose rocks, and yawning gorges. The way led up an ancient
road through a jungle of _hau_ trees. On every side were the vestiges
of a one-time dense population. Wherever the eye could penetrate the
thick growth, glimpses were caught of stone walls and of stone
foundations, six to eight feet in height, built solidly throughout, and
many yards in width and depth. They formed great stone platforms, upon
which, at one time, there had been houses. But the houses and the
people were gone, and huge trees sank their roots through the platforms
and towered over the under-running jungle. These foundations are called
_pae-paes_—the _pi-pis_ of Melville, who spelled phonetically.

The Marquesans of the present generation lack the energy to hoist and
place such huge stones. Also, they lack incentive. There are plenty of
_pae-paes_ to go around, with a few thousand unoccupied ones left over.
Once or twice, as we ascended the valley, we saw magnificent _pae-paes_
bearing on their general surface pitiful little straw huts, the
proportions being similar to a voting booth perched on the broad
foundation of the Pyramid of Cheops. For the Marquesans are perishing,
and, to judge from conditions at Taiohae, the one thing that retards
their destruction is the infusion of fresh blood. A pure Marquesan is a
rarity. They seem to be all half-breeds and strange conglomerations of
dozens of different races. Nineteen able labourers are all the trader
at Taiohae can muster for the loading of copra on shipboard, and in
their veins runs the blood of English, American, Dane, German, French,
Corsican, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Hawaiian, Paumotan, Tahitian,
and Easter Islander. There are more races than there are persons, but
it is a wreckage of races at best. Life faints and stumbles and gasps
itself away. In this warm, equable clime—a truly terrestrial
paradise—where are never extremes of temperature and where the air is
like balm, kept ever pure by the ozone-laden southeast trade, asthma,
phthisis, and tuberculosis flourish as luxuriantly as the vegetation.
Everywhere, from the few grass huts, arises the racking cough or
exhausted groan of wasted lungs. Other horrible diseases prosper as
well, but the most deadly of all are those that attack the lungs. There
is a form of consumption called “galloping,” which is especially
dreaded. In two months’ time it reduces the strongest man to a skeleton
under a grave-cloth. In valley after valley the last inhabitant has
passed and the fertile soil has relapsed to jungle. In Melville’s day
the valley of Hapaa (spelled by him “Happar”) was peopled by a strong
and warlike tribe. A generation later, it contained but two hundred
persons. To-day it is an untenanted, howling, tropical wilderness.

We climbed higher and higher in the valley, our unshod stallions
picking their steps on the disintegrating trail, which led in and out
through the abandoned _pae-paes_ and insatiable jungle. The sight of
red mountain apples, the _ohias_, familiar to us from Hawaii, caused a
native to be sent climbing after them. And again he climbed for
cocoa-nuts. I have drunk the cocoanuts of Jamaica and of Hawaii, but I
never knew how delicious such draught could be till I drank it here in
the Marquesas. Occasionally we rode under wild limes and oranges—great
trees which had survived the wilderness longer than the motes of humans
who had cultivated them.

We rode through endless thickets of yellow-pollened cassi—if riding it
could be called; for those fragrant thickets were inhabited by wasps.
And such wasps! Great yellow fellows the size of small canary birds,
darting through the air with behind them drifting a bunch of legs a
couple of inches long. A stallion abruptly stands on his forelegs and
thrusts his hind legs skyward. He withdraws them from the sky long
enough to make one wild jump ahead, and then returns them to their
index position. It is nothing. His thick hide has merely been punctured
by a flaming lance of wasp virility. Then a second and a third
stallion, and all the stallions, begin to cavort on their forelegs over
the precipitous landscape. Swat! A white-hot poniard penetrates my
cheek. Swat again!! I am stabbed in the neck. I am bringing up the rear
and getting more than my share. There is no retreat, and the plunging
horses ahead, on a precarious trail, promise little safety. My horse
overruns Charmian’s horse, and that sensitive creature, fresh-stung at
the psychological moment, planks one of his hoofs into my horse and the
other hoof into me. I thank my stars that he is not steel-shod, and
half-arise from the saddle at the impact of another flaming dagger. I
am certainly getting more than my share, and so is my poor horse, whose
pain and panic are only exceeded by mine.

“Get out of the way! I’m coming!” I shout, frantically dashing my cap
at the winged vipers around me.

On one side of the trail the landscape rises straight up. On the other
side it sinks straight down. The only way to get out of my way is to
keep on going. How that string of horses kept their feet is a miracle;
but they dashed ahead, over-running one another, galloping, trotting,
stumbling, jumping, scrambling, and kicking methodically skyward every
time a wasp landed on them. After a while we drew breath and counted
our injuries. And this happened not once, nor twice, but time after
time. Strange to say, it never grew monotonous. I know that I, for one,
came through each brush with the undiminished zest of a man flying from
sudden death. No; the pilgrim from Taiohae to Typee will never suffer
from _ennui_ on the way.

At last we arose above the vexation of wasps. It was a matter of
altitude, however, rather than of fortitude. All about us lay the
jagged back-bones of ranges, as far as the eye could see, thrusting
their pinnacles into the trade-wind clouds. Under us, from the way we
had come, the _Snark_ lay like a tiny toy on the calm water of Taiohae
Bay. Ahead we could see the inshore indentation of Comptroller Bay. We
dropped down a thousand feet, and Typee lay beneath us. “Had a glimpse
of the gardens of paradise been revealed to me I could scarcely have
been more ravished with the sight”—so said Melville on the moment of
his first view of the valley. He saw a garden. We saw a wilderness.
Where were the hundred groves of the breadfruit tree he saw? We saw
jungle, nothing but jungle, with the exception of two grass huts and
several clumps of cocoanuts breaking the primordial green mantle. Where
was the _Ti_ of Mehevi, the bachelors’ hall, the palace where women
were taboo, and where he ruled with his lesser chieftains, keeping the
half-dozen dusty and torpid ancients to remind them of the valorous
past? From the swift stream no sounds arose of maids and matrons
pounding _tapa_. And where was the hut that old Narheyo eternally
builded? In vain I looked for him perched ninety feet from the ground
in some tall cocoanut, taking his morning smoke.

We went down a zigzag trail under overarching, matted jungle, where
great butterflies drifted by in the silence. No tattooed savage with
club and javelin guarded the path; and when we forded the stream, we
were free to roam where we pleased. No longer did the taboo, sacred and
merciless, reign in that sweet vale. Nay, the taboo still did reign, a
new taboo, for when we approached too near the several wretched native
women, the taboo was uttered warningly. And it was well. They were
lepers. The man who warned us was afflicted horribly with
elephantiasis. All were suffering from lung trouble. The valley of
Typee was the abode of death, and the dozen survivors of the tribe were
gasping feebly the last painful breaths of the race.

Certainly the battle had not been to the strong, for once the Typeans
were very strong, stronger than the Happars, stronger than the
Taiohaeans, stronger than all the tribes of Nuku-hiva. The word
“typee,” or, rather, “taipi,” originally signified an eater of human
flesh. But since all the Marquesans were human-flesh eaters, to be so
designated was the token that the Typeans were the human-flesh eaters
par excellence. Not alone to Nuku-hiva did the Typean reputation for
bravery and ferocity extend. In all the islands of the Marquesas the
Typeans were named with dread. Man could not conquer them. Even the
French fleet that took possession of the Marquesas left the Typeans
alone. Captain Porter, of the frigate _Essex_, once invaded the valley.
His sailors and marines were reinforced by two thousand warriors of
Happar and Taiohae. They penetrated quite a distance into the valley,
but met with so fierce a resistance that they were glad to retreat and
get away in their flotilla of boats and war-canoes.

Of all inhabitants of the South Seas, the Marquesans were adjudged the
strongest and the most beautiful. Melville said of them: “I was
especially struck by the physical strength and beauty they displayed .
. . In beauty of form they surpassed anything I had ever seen. Not a
single instance of natural deformity was observable in all the throng
attending the revels. Every individual appeared free from those
blemishes which sometimes mar the effect of an otherwise perfect form.
But their physical excellence did not merely consist in an exemption
from these evils; nearly every individual of the number might have been
taken for a sculptor’s model.” Mendaña, the discoverer of the
Marquesas, described the natives as wondrously beautiful to behold.
Figueroa, the chronicler of his voyage, said of them: “In complexion
they were nearly white; of good stature and finely formed.” Captain
Cook called the Marquesans the most splendid islanders in the South
Seas. The men were described, as “in almost every instance of lofty
stature, scarcely ever less than six feet in height.”

And now all this strength and beauty has departed, and the valley of
Typee is the abode of some dozen wretched creatures, afflicted by
leprosy, elephantiasis, and tuberculosis. Melville estimated the
population at two thousand, not taking into consideration the small
adjoining valley of Ho-o-u-mi. Life has rotted away in this wonderful
garden spot, where the climate is as delightful and healthful as any to
be found in the world. Not alone were the Typeans physically
magnificent; they were pure. Their air did not contain the bacilli and
germs and microbes of disease that fill our own air. And when the white
men imported in their ships these various micro-organisms or disease,
the Typeans crumpled up and went down before them.

When one considers the situation, one is almost driven to the
conclusion that the white race flourishes on impurity and corruption.
Natural selection, however, gives the explanation. We of the white race
are the survivors and the descendants of the thousands of generations
of survivors in the war with the micro-organisms. Whenever one of us
was born with a constitution peculiarly receptive to these minute
enemies, such a one promptly died. Only those of us survived who could
withstand them. We who are alive are the immune, the fit—the ones best
constituted to live in a world of hostile micro-organisms. The poor
Marquesans had undergone no such selection. They were not immune. And
they, who had made a custom of eating their enemies, were now eaten by
enemies so microscopic as to be invisible, and against whom no war of
dart and javelin was possible. On the other hand, had there been a few
hundred thousand Marquesans to begin with, there might have been
sufficient survivors to lay the foundation for a new race—a regenerated
race, if a plunge into a festering bath of organic poison can be called
regeneration.

We unsaddled our horses for lunch, and after we had fought the
stallions apart—mine with several fresh chunks bitten out of his
back—and after we had vainly fought the sand-flies, we ate bananas and
tinned meats, washed down by generous draughts of cocoanut milk. There
was little to be seen. The jungle had rushed back and engulfed the puny
works of man. Here and there _pai-pais_ were to be stumbled upon, but
there were no inscriptions, no hieroglyphics, no clues to the past they
attested—only dumb stones, builded and carved by hands that were
forgotten dust. Out of the _pai-pais_ grew great trees, jealous of the
wrought work of man, splitting and scattering the stones back into the
primeval chaos.

We gave up the jungle and sought the stream with the idea of evading
the sand-flies. Vain hope! To go in swimming one must take off his
clothes. The sand-flies are aware of the fact, and they lurk by the
river bank in countless myriads. In the native they are called the
_nau-nau_, which is pronounced “now-now.” They are certainly well
named, for they are the insistent present. There is no past nor future
when they fasten upon one’s epidermis, and I am willing to wager that
Omer Khayyám could never have written the Rubáiyat in the valley of
Typee—it would have been psychologically impossible. I made the
strategic mistake of undressing on the edge of a steep bank where I
could dive in but could not climb out. When I was ready to dress, I had
a hundred yards’ walk on the bank before I could reach my clothes. At
the first step, fully ten thousand _nau-naus_ landed upon me. At the
second step I was walking in a cloud. By the third step the sun was
dimmed in the sky. After that I don’t know what happened. When I
arrived at my clothes, I was a maniac. And here enters my grand
tactical error. There is only one rule of conduct in dealing with
_nau-naus_. Never swat them. Whatever you do, don’t swat them. They are
so vicious that in the instant of annihilation they eject their last
atom of poison into your carcass. You must pluck them delicately,
between thumb and forefinger, and persuade them gently to remove their
proboscides from your quivering flesh. It is like pulling teeth. But
the difficulty was that the teeth sprouted faster than I could pull
them, so I swatted, and, so doing, filled myself full with their
poison. This was a week ago. At the present moment I resemble a sadly
neglected smallpox convalescent.

Ho-o-u-mi is a small valley, separated from Typee by a low ridge, and
thither we started when we had knocked our indomitable and insatiable
riding-animals into submission. As it was, Warren’s mount, after a mile
run, selected the most dangerous part of the trail for an exhibition
that kept us all on the anxious seat for fully five minutes. We rode by
the mouth of Typee valley and gazed down upon the beach from which
Melville escaped. There was where the whale-boat lay on its oars close
in to the surf; and there was where Karakoee, the taboo Kanaka, stood
in the water and trafficked for the sailor’s life. There, surely, was
where Melville gave Fayaway the parting embrace ere he dashed for the
boat. And there was the point of land from which Mehevi and Mow-mow and
their following swam off to intercept the boat, only to have their
wrists gashed by sheath-knives when they laid hold of the gunwale,
though it was reserved for Mow-mow to receive the boat-hook full in the
throat from Melville’s hands.

We rode on to Ho-o-u-mi. So closely was Melville guarded that he never
dreamed of the existence of this valley, though he must continually
have met its inhabitants, for they belonged to Typee. We rode through
the same abandoned _pae-paes_, but as we neared the sea we found a
profusion of cocoanuts, breadfruit trees and taro patches, and fully a
dozen grass dwellings. In one of these we arranged to pass the night,
and preparations were immediately put on foot for a feast. A young pig
was promptly despatched, and while he was being roasted among hot
stones, and while chickens were stewing in cocoanut milk, I persuaded
one of the cooks to climb an unusually tall cocoanut palm. The cluster
of nuts at the top was fully one hundred and twenty-five feet from the
ground, but that native strode up to the tree, seized it in both hands,
jack-knived at the waist so that the soles of his feet rested flatly
against the trunk, and then he walked right straight up without
stopping. There were no notches in the tree. He had no ropes to help
him. He merely walked up the tree, one hundred and twenty-five feet in
the air, and cast down the nuts from the summit. Not every man there
had the physical stamina for such a feat, or the lungs, rather, for
most of them were coughing their lives away. Some of the women kept up
a ceaseless moaning and groaning, so badly were their lungs wasted.
Very few of either sex were full-blooded Marquesans. They were mostly
half-breeds and three-quarter-breeds of French, English, Danish, and
Chinese extraction. At the best, these infusions of fresh blood merely
delayed the passing, and the results led one to wonder whether it was
worth while.

The feast was served on a broad _pae-pae_, the rear portion of which
was occupied by the house in which we were to sleep. The first course
was raw fish and _poi-poi_, the latter sharp and more acrid of taste
than the _poi_ of Hawaii, which is made from taro. The _poi-poi_ of the
Marquesas is made from breadfruit. The ripe fruit, after the core is
removed, is placed in a calabash and pounded with a stone pestle into a
stiff, sticky paste. In this stage of the process, wrapped in leaves,
it can be buried in the ground, where it will keep for years. Before it
can be eaten, however, further processes are necessary. A leaf-covered
package is placed among hot stones, like the pig, and thoroughly baked.
After that it is mixed with cold water and thinned out—not thin enough
to run, but thin enough to be eaten by sticking one’s first and second
fingers into it. On close acquaintance it proves a pleasant and most
healthful food. And breadfruit, ripe and well boiled or roasted! It is
delicious. Breadfruit and taro are kingly vegetables, the pair of them,
though the former is patently a misnomer and more resembles a sweet
potato than anything else, though it is not mealy like a sweet potato,
nor is it so sweet.

The feast ended, we watched the moon rise over Typee. The air was like
balm, faintly scented with the breath of flowers. It was a magic night,
deathly still, without the slightest breeze to stir the foliage; and
one caught one’s breath and felt the pang that is almost hurt, so
exquisite was the beauty of it. Faint and far could be heard the thin
thunder of the surf upon the beach. There were no beds; and we drowsed
and slept wherever we thought the floor softest. Near by, a woman
panted and moaned in her sleep, and all about us the dying islanders
coughed in the night.




CHAPTER XI
THE NATURE MAN


I first met him on Market Street in San Francisco. It was a wet and
drizzly afternoon, and he was striding along, clad solely in a pair of
abbreviated knee-trousers and an abbreviated shirt, his bare feet going
slick-slick through the pavement-slush. At his heels trooped a score of
excited gamins. Every head—and there were thousands—turned to glance
curiously at him as he went by. And I turned, too. Never had I seen
such lovely sunburn. He was all sunburn, of the sort a blond takes on
when his skin does not peel. His long yellow hair was burnt, so was his
beard, which sprang from a soil unploughed by any razor. He was a tawny
man, a golden-tawny man, all glowing and radiant with the sun. Another
prophet, thought I, come up to town with a message that will save the
world.

A few weeks later I was with some friends in their bungalow in the
Piedmont hills overlooking San Francisco Bay. “We’ve got him, we’ve got
him,” they barked. “We caught him up a tree; but he’s all right now,
he’ll feed from the hand. Come on and see him.” So I accompanied them
up a dizzy hill, and in a rickety shack in the midst of a eucalyptus
grove found my sunburned prophet of the city pavements.

He hastened to meet us, arriving in the whirl and blur of a handspring.
He did not shake hands with us; instead, his greeting took the form of
stunts. He turned more handsprings. He twisted his body sinuously, like
a snake, until, having sufficiently limbered up, he bent from the hips,
and, with legs straight and knees touching, beat a tattoo on the ground
with the palms of his hands. He whirligigged and pirouetted, dancing
and cavorting round like an inebriated ape. All the sun-warmth of his
ardent life beamed in his face. I am so happy, was the song without
words he sang.

He sang it all evening, ringing the changes on it with an endless
variety of stunts. “A fool! a fool! I met a fool in the forest!”
thought I, and a worthy fool he proved. Between handsprings and
whirligigs he delivered his message that would save the world. It was
twofold. First, let suffering humanity strip off its clothing and run
wild in the mountains and valleys; and, second, let the very miserable
world adopt phonetic spelling. I caught a glimpse of the great social
problems being settled by the city populations swarming naked over the
landscape, to the popping of shot-guns, the barking of ranch-dogs, and
countless assaults with pitchforks wielded by irate farmers.

The years passed, and, one sunny morning, the _Snark_ poked her nose
into a narrow opening in a reef that smoked with the crashing impact of
the trade-wind swell, and beat slowly up Papeete harbour. Coming off to
us was a boat, flying a yellow flag. We knew it contained the port
doctor. But quite a distance off, in its wake, was a tiny out rigger
canoe that puzzled us. It was flying a red flag. I studied it through
the glasses, fearing that it marked some hidden danger to navigation,
some recent wreck or some buoy or beacon that had been swept away. Then
the doctor came on board. After he had examined the state of our health
and been assured that we had no live rats hidden away in the _Snark_, I
asked him the meaning of the red flag. “Oh, that is Darling,” was the
answer.

And then Darling, Ernest Darling flying the red flag that is indicative
of the brotherhood of man, hailed us. “Hello, Jack!” he called. “Hello,
Charmian!” He paddled swiftly nearer, and I saw that he was the tawny
prophet of the Piedmont hills. He came over the side, a sun-god clad in
a scarlet loin-cloth, with presents of Arcady and greeting in both his
hands—a bottle of golden honey and a leaf-basket filled _with_ great
golden mangoes, golden bananas specked with freckles of deeper gold,
golden pine-apples and golden limes, and juicy oranges minted from the
same precious ore of sun and soil. And in this fashion under the
southern sky, I met once more Darling, the Nature Man.

Tahiti is one of the most beautiful spots in the world, inhabited by
thieves and robbers and liars, also by several honest and truthful men
and women. Wherefore, because of the blight cast upon Tahiti’s
wonderful beauty by the spidery human vermin that infest it, I am
minded to write, not of Tahiti, but of the Nature Man. He, at least, is
refreshing and wholesome. The spirit that emanates from him is so
gentle and sweet that it would harm nothing, hurt nobody’s feelings
save the feelings of a predatory and plutocratic capitalist.

“What does this red flag mean?” I asked.

“Socialism, of course.”

“Yes, yes, I know that,” I went on; “but what does it mean in your
hands?”

“Why, that I’ve found my message.”

“And that you are delivering it to Tahiti?” I demanded incredulously.

“Sure,” he answered simply; and later on I found that he was, too.

When we dropped anchor, lowered a small boat into the water, and
started ashore, the Nature Man joined us. Now, thought I, I shall be
pestered to death by this crank. Waking or sleeping I shall never be
quit of him until I sail away from here.

But never in my life was I more mistaken. I took a house and went to
live and work in it, and the Nature Man never came near me. He was
waiting for the invitation. In the meantime he went aboard the _Snark_
and took possession of her library, delighted by the quantity of
scientific books, and shocked, as I learned afterwards, by the
inordinate amount of fiction. The Nature Man never wastes time on
fiction.

After a week or so, my conscience smote me, and I invited him to dinner
at a downtown hotel.

He arrived, looking unwontedly stiff and uncomfortable in a cotton
jacket. When invited to peel it off, he beamed his gratitude and joy,
and did so, revealing his sun-gold skin, from waist to shoulder,
covered only by a piece of fish-net of coarse twine and large of mesh.
A scarlet loin-cloth completed his costume. I began my acquaintance
with him that night, and during my long stay in Tahiti that
acquaintance ripened into friendship.

“So you write books,” he said, one day when, tired and sweaty, I
finished my morning’s work.

“I, too, write books,” he announced.

Aha, thought I, now at last is he going to pester me with his literary
efforts. My soul was in revolt. I had not come all the way to the South
Seas to be a literary bureau.

“This is the book I write,” he explained, smashing himself a resounding
blow on the chest with his clenched fist. “The gorilla in the African
jungle pounds his chest till the noise of it can be heard half a mile
away.”

“A pretty good chest,” quoth I, admiringly; “it would even make a
gorilla envious.”

And then, and later, I learned the details of the marvellous book
Ernest Darling had written. Twelve years ago he lay close to death. He
weighed but ninety pounds, and was too weak to speak. The doctors had
given him up. His father, a practising physician, had given him up.
Consultations with other physicians had been held upon him. There was
no hope for him. Overstudy (as a school-teacher and as a university
student) and two successive attacks of pneumonia were responsible for
his breakdown. Day by day he was losing strength. He could extract no
nutrition from the heavy foods they gave him; nor could pellets and
powders help his stomach to do the work of digestion. Not only was he a
physical wreck, but he was a mental wreck. His mind was overwrought. He
was sick and tired of medicine, and he was sick and tired of persons.
Human speech jarred upon him. Human attentions drove him frantic. The
thought came to him that since he was going to die, he might as well
die in the open, away from all the bother and irritation. And behind
this idea lurked a sneaking idea that perhaps he would not die after
all if only he could escape from the heavy foods, the medicines, and
the well-intentioned persons who made him frantic.

So Ernest Darling, a bag of bones and a death’s-head, a perambulating
corpse, with just the dimmest flutter of life in it to make it
perambulate, turned his back upon men and the habitations of men and
dragged himself for five miles through the brush, away from the city of
Portland, Oregon. Of course he was crazy. Only a lunatic would drag
himself out of his death-bed.

But in the brush, Darling found what he was looking for—rest. Nobody
bothered him with beefsteaks and pork. No physicians lacerated his
tired nerves by feeling his pulse, nor tormented his tired stomach with
pellets and powders. He began to feel soothed. The sun was shining
warm, and he basked in it. He had the feeling that the sun shine was an
elixir of health. Then it seemed to him that his whole wasted wreck of
a body was crying for the sun. He stripped off his clothes and bathed
in the sunshine. He felt better. It had done him good—the first relief
in weary months of pain.

As he grew better, he sat up and began to take notice. All about him
were the birds fluttering and chirping, the squirrels chattering and
playing. He envied them their health and spirits, their happy,
care-free existence. That he should contrast their condition with his
was inevitable; and that he should question why they were splendidly
vigorous while he was a feeble, dying wraith of a man, was likewise
inevitable. His conclusion was the very obvious one, namely, that they
lived naturally, while he lived most unnaturally; therefore, if he
intended to live, he must return to nature.

Alone, there in the brush, he worked out his problem and began to apply
it. He stripped off his clothing and leaped and gambolled about,
running on all fours, climbing trees; in short, doing physical
stunts,—and all the time soaking in the sunshine. He imitated the
animals. He built a nest of dry leaves and grasses in which to sleep at
night, covering it over with bark as a protection against the early
fall rains. “Here is a beautiful exercise,” he told me, once, flapping
his arms mightily against his sides; “I learned it from watching the
roosters crow.” Another time I remarked the loud, sucking intake with
which he drank cocoanut-milk. He explained that he had noticed the cows
drinking that way and concluded there must be something in it. He tried
it and found it good, and thereafter he drank only in that fashion.

He noted that the squirrels lived on fruits and nuts. He started on a
fruit-and-nut diet, helped out by bread, and he grew stronger and put
on weight. For three months he continued his primordial existence in
the brush, and then the heavy Oregon rains drove him back to the
habitations of men. Not in three months could a ninety-pound survivor
of two attacks of pneumonia develop sufficient ruggedness to live
through an Oregon winter in the open.

He had accomplished much, but he had been driven in. There was no place
to go but back to his father’s house, and there, living in close rooms
with lungs that panted for all the air of the open sky, he was brought
down by a third attack of pneumonia. He grew weaker even than before.
In that tottering tabernacle of flesh, his brain collapsed. He lay like
a corpse, too weak to stand the fatigue of speaking, too irritated and
tired in his miserable brain to care to listen to the speech of others.
The only act of will of which he was capable was to stick his fingers
in his ears and resolutely to refuse to hear a single word that was
spoken to him. They sent for the insanity experts. He was adjudged
insane, and also the verdict was given that he would not live a month.

By one such mental expert he was carted off to a sanatorium on Mt.
Tabor. Here, when they learned that he was harmless, they gave him his
own way. They no longer dictated as to the food he ate, so he resumed
his fruits and nuts—olive oil, peanut butter, and bananas the chief
articles of his diet. As he regained his strength he made up his mind
to live thenceforth his own life. If he lived like others, according to
social conventions, he would surely die. And he did not want to die.
The fear of death was one of the strongest factors in the genesis of
the Nature Man. To live, he must have a natural diet, the open air, and
the blessed sunshine.

Now an Oregon winter has no inducements for those who wish to return to
Nature, so Darling started out in search of a climate. He mounted a
bicycle and headed south for the sunlands. Stanford University claimed
him for a year. Here he studied and worked his way, attending lectures
in as scant garb as the authorities would allow and applying as much as
possible the principles of living that he had learned in squirrel-town.
His favourite method of study was to go off in the hills back of the
University, and there to strip off his clothes and lie on the grass,
soaking in sunshine and health at the same time that he soaked in
knowledge.

But Central California has her winters, and the quest for a Nature
Man’s climate drew him on. He tried Los Angeles and Southern
California, being arrested a few times and brought before the insanity
commissions because, forsooth, his mode of life was not modelled after
the mode of life of his fellow-men. He tried Hawaii, where, unable to
prove him insane, the authorities deported him. It was not exactly a
deportation. He could have remained by serving a year in prison. They
gave him his choice. Now prison is death to the Nature Man, who thrives
only in the open air and in God’s sunshine. The authorities of Hawaii
are not to be blamed. Darling was an undesirable citizen. Any man is
undesirable who disagrees with one. And that any man should disagree to
the extent Darling did in his philosophy of the simple life is ample
vindication of the Hawaiian authorities verdict of his undesirableness.

So Darling went thence in search of a climate which would not only be
desirable, but wherein he would not be undesirable. And he found it in
Tahiti, the garden-spot of garden-spots. And so it was, according to
the narrative as given, that he wrote the pages of his book. He wears
only a loin-cloth and a sleeveless fish-net shirt. His stripped weight
is one hundred and sixty-five pounds. His health is perfect. His
eyesight, that at one time was considered ruined, is excellent. The
lungs that were practically destroyed by three attacks of pneumonia
have not only recovered, but are stronger than ever before.

I shall never forget the first time, while talking to me, that he
squashed a mosquito. The stinging pest had settled in the middle of his
back between his shoulders. Without interrupting the flow of
conversation, without dropping even a syllable, his clenched fist shot
up in the air, curved backward, and smote his back between the
shoulders, killing the mosquito and making his frame resound like a
bass drum. It reminded me of nothing so much as of horses kicking the
woodwork in their stalls.

“The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his chest until the noise of
it can be heard half a mile away,” he will announce suddenly, and
thereat beat a hair-raising, devil’s tattoo on his own chest.

One day he noticed a set of boxing-gloves hanging on the wall, and
promptly his eyes brightened.

“Do you box?” I asked.

“I used to give lessons in boxing when I was at Stanford,” was the
reply.

And there and then we stripped and put on the gloves. Bang! a long,
gorilla arm flashed out, landing the gloved end on my nose. Biff! he
caught me, in a duck, on the side of the head nearly knocking me over
sidewise. I carried the lump raised by that blow for a week. I ducked
under a straight left, and landed a straight right on his stomach. It
was a fearful blow. The whole weight of my body was behind it, and his
body had been met as it lunged forward. I looked for him to crumple up
and go down. Instead of which his face beamed approval, and he said,
“That was beautiful.” The next instant I was covering up and striving
to protect myself from a hurricane of hooks, jolts, and uppercuts. Then
I watched my chance and drove in for the solar plexus. I hit the mark.
The Nature Man dropped his arms, gasped, and sat down suddenly.

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “Just wait a moment.”

And inside thirty seconds he was on his feet—ay, and returning the
compliment, for he hooked me in the solar plexus, and I gasped, dropped
my hands, and sat down just a trifle more suddenly than he had.

All of which I submit as evidence that the man I boxed with was a
totally different man from the poor, ninety-pound weight of eight years
before, who, given up by physicians and alienists, lay gasping his life
away in a closed room in Portland, Oregon. The book that Ernest Darling
has written is a good book, and the binding is good, too.

Hawaii has wailed for years her need for desirable immigrants. She has
spent much time, and thought, and money, in importing desirable
citizens, and she has, as yet, nothing much to show for it. Yet Hawaii
deported the Nature Man. She refused to give him a chance. So it is, to
chasten Hawaii’s proud spirit, that I take this opportunity to show her
what she has lost in the Nature Man. When he arrived in Tahiti, he
proceeded to seek out a piece of land on which to grow the food he ate.
But land was difficult to find—that is, inexpensive land. The Nature
Man was not rolling in wealth. He spent weeks in wandering over the
steep hills, until, high up the mountain, where clustered several tiny
canyons, he found eighty acres of brush-jungle which were apparently
unrecorded as the property of any one. The government officials told
him that if he would clear the land and till it for thirty years he
would be given a title for it.

Immediately he set to work. And never was there such work. Nobody
farmed that high up. The land was covered with matted jungle and
overrun by wild pigs and countless rats. The view of Papeete and the
sea was magnificent, but the outlook was not encouraging. He spent
weeks in building a road in order to make the plantation accessible.
The pigs and the rats ate up whatever he planted as fast as it
sprouted. He shot the pigs and trapped the rats. Of the latter, in two
weeks he caught fifteen hundred. Everything had to be carried up on his
back. He usually did his packhorse work at night.

Gradually he began to win out. A grass-walled house was built. On the
fertile, volcanic soil he had wrested from the jungle and jungle beasts
were growing five hundred cocoanut trees, five hundred papaia trees,
three hundred mango trees, many breadfruit trees and alligator-pear
trees, to say nothing of vines, bushes, and vegetables. He developed
the drip of the hills in the canyons and worked out an efficient
irrigation scheme, ditching the water from canyon to canyon and
paralleling the ditches at different altitudes. His narrow canyons
became botanical gardens. The arid shoulders of the hills, where
formerly the blazing sun had parched the jungle and beaten it close to
earth, blossomed into trees and shrubs and flowers. Not only had the
Nature Man become self-supporting, but he was now a prosperous
agriculturist with produce to sell to the city-dwellers of Papeete.

Then it was discovered that his land, which the government officials
had informed him was without an owner, really had an owner, and that
deeds, descriptions, etc., were on record. All his work bade fare to be
lost. The land had been valueless when he took it up, and the owner, a
large landholder, was unaware of the extent to which the Nature Man had
developed it. A just price was agreed upon, and Darling’s deed was
officially filed.

Next came a more crushing blow. Darling’s access to market was
destroyed. The road he had built was fenced across by triple barb-wire
fences. It was one of those jumbles in human affairs that is so common
in this absurdest of social systems. Behind it was the fine hand of the
same conservative element that haled the Nature Man before the Insanity
Commission in Los Angeles and that deported him from Hawaii. It is so
hard for self-satisfied men to understand any man whose satisfactions
are fundamentally different. It seems clear that the officials have
connived with the conservative element, for to this day the road the
Nature Man built is closed; nothing has been done about it, while an
adamant unwillingness to do anything about it is evidenced on every
hand. But the Nature Man dances and sings along his way. He does not
sit up nights thinking about the wrong which has been done him; he
leaves the worrying to the doers of the wrong. He has no time for
bitterness. He believes he is in the world for the purpose of being
happy, and he has not a moment to waste in any other pursuit.

The road to his plantation is blocked. He cannot build a new road, for
there is no ground on which he can build it. The government has
restricted him to a wild-pig trail which runs precipitously up the
mountain. I climbed the trail with him, and we had to climb with hands
and feet in order to get up. Nor can that wild-pig trail be made into a
road by any amount of toil less than that of an engineer, a
steam-engine, and a steel cable. But what does the Nature Man care? In
his gentle ethics the evil men do him he requites with goodness. And
who shall say he is not happier than they?

“Never mind their pesky road,” he said to me as we dragged ourselves up
a shelf of rock and sat down, panting, to rest. “I’ll get an air
machine soon and fool them. I’m clearing a level space for a landing
stage for the airships, and next time you come to Tahiti you will
alight right at my door.”

Yes, the Nature Man has some strange ideas besides that of the gorilla
pounding his chest in the African jungle. The Nature Man has ideas
about levitation. “Yes, sir,” he said to me, “levitation is not
impossible. And think of the glory of it—lifting one’s self from the
ground by an act of will. Think of it! The astronomers tell us that our
whole solar system is dying; that, barring accidents, it will all be so
cold that no life can live upon it. Very well. In that day all men will
be accomplished levitationists, and they will leave this perishing
planet and seek more hospitable worlds. How can levitation be
accomplished? By progressive fasts. Yes, I have tried them, and toward
the end I could feel myself actually getting lighter.”

The man is a maniac, thought I.

“Of course,” he added, “these are only theories of mine. I like to
speculate upon the glorious future of man. Levitation may not be
possible, but I like to think of it as possible.”

One evening, when he yawned, I asked him how much sleep he allowed
himself.

“Seven hours,” was the answer. “But in ten years I’ll be sleeping only
six hours, and in twenty years only five hours. You see, I shall cut
off an hour’s sleep every ten years.”

“Then when you are a hundred you won’t be sleeping at all,” I
interjected.

“Just that. Exactly that. When I am a hundred I shall not require
sleep. Also, I shall be living on air. There are plants that live on
air, you know.”

“But has any man ever succeeded in doing it?”

He shook his head.

“I never heard of him if he did. But it is only a theory of mine, this
living on air. It would be fine, wouldn’t it? Of course it may be
impossible—most likely it is. You see, I am not unpractical. I never
forget the present. When I soar ahead into the future, I always leave a
string by which to find my way back again.”

I fear me the Nature Man is a joker. At any rate he lives the simple
life. His laundry bill cannot be large. Up on his plantation he lives
on fruit the labour cost of which, in cash, he estimates at five cents
a day. At present, because of his obstructed road and because he is
head over heels in the propaganda of socialism, he is living in town,
where his expenses, including rent, are twenty-five cents a day. In
order to pay those expenses he is running a night school for Chinese.

The Nature Man is not bigoted. When there is nothing better to eat than
meat, he eats meat, as, for instance, when in jail or on shipboard and
the nuts and fruits give out. Nor does he seem to crystallize into
anything except sunburn.

“Drop anchor anywhere and the anchor will drag—that is, if your soul is
a limitless, fathomless sea, and not dog-pound,” he quoted to me, then
added: “You see, my anchor is always dragging. I live for human health
and progress, and I strive to drag my anchor always in that direction.
To me, the two are identical. Dragging anchor is what has saved me. My
anchor did not hold me to my death-bed. I dragged anchor into the brush
and fooled the doctors. When I recovered health and strength, I
started, by preaching and by example, to teach the people to become
nature men and nature women. But they had deaf ears. Then, on the
steamer coming to Tahiti, a quarter-master expounded socialism to me.
He showed me that an economic square deal was necessary before men and
women could live naturally. So I dragged anchor once more, and now I am
working for the co-operative commonwealth. When that arrives, it will
be easy to bring about nature living.

“I had a dream last night,” he went on thoughtfully, his face slowly
breaking into a glow. “It seemed that twenty-five nature men and nature
women had just arrived on the steamer from California, and that I was
starting to go with them up the wild-pig trail to the plantation.”

Ah, me, Ernest Darling, sun-worshipper and nature man, there are times
when I am compelled to envy you and your carefree existence. I see you
now, dancing up the steps and cutting antics on the veranda; your hair
dripping from a plunge in the salt sea, your eyes sparkling, your
sun-gilded body flashing, your chest resounding to the devil’s own
tattoo as you chant: “The gorilla in the African jungle pounds his
chest until the noise of it can be heard half a mile away.” And I shall
see you always as I saw you that last day, when the _Snark_ poked her
nose once more through the passage in the smoking reef, outward bound,
and I waved good-bye to those on shore. Not least in goodwill and
affection was the wave I gave to the golden sun-god in the scarlet
loin-cloth, standing upright in his tiny outrigger canoe.




CHAPTER XII
THE HIGH SEAT OF ABUNDANCE


On the arrival of strangers, every man endeavoured to obtain one as a
friend and carry him off to his own habitation, where he is treated
with the greatest kindness by the inhabitants of the district; they
place him on a high seat and feed him with abundance of the finest
food.—_Polynesian Researches_.

The _Snark_ was lying at anchor at Raiatea, just off the village of
Uturoa. She had arrived the night before, after dark, and we were
preparing to pay our first visit ashore. Early in the morning I had
noticed a tiny outrigger canoe, with an impossible spritsail, skimming
the surface of the lagoon. The canoe itself was coffin-shaped, a mere
dugout, fourteen feet long, a scant twelve inches wide, and maybe
twenty-four inches deep. It had no lines, except in so far that it was
sharp at both ends. Its sides were perpendicular. Shorn of the
outrigger, it would have capsized of itself inside a tenth of a second.
It was the outrigger that kept it right side up.

I have said that the sail was impossible. It was. It was one of those
things, not that you have to see to believe, but that you cannot
believe after you have seen it. The hoist of it and the length of its
boom were sufficiently appalling; but, not content with that, its
artificer had given it a tremendous head. So large was the head that no
common sprit could carry the strain of it in an ordinary breeze. So a
spar had been lashed to the canoe, projecting aft over the water. To
this had been made fast a sprit guy: thus, the foot of the sail was
held by the main-sheet, and the peak by the guy to the sprit.

It was not a mere boat, not a mere canoe, but a sailing machine. And
the man in it sailed it by his weight and his nerve—principally by the
latter. I watched the canoe beat up from leeward and run in toward the
village, its sole occupant far out on the outrigger and luffing up and
spilling the wind in the puffs.

“Well, I know one thing,” I announced; “I don’t leave Raiatea till I
have a ride in that canoe.”

A few minutes later Warren called down the companionway, “Here’s that
canoe you were talking about.”

Promptly I dashed on deck and gave greeting to its owner, a tall,
slender Polynesian, ingenuous of face, and with clear, sparkling,
intelligent eyes. He was clad in a scarlet loin-cloth and a straw hat.
In his hands were presents—a fish, a bunch of greens, and several
enormous yams. All of which acknowledged by smiles (which are coinage
still in isolated spots of Polynesia) and by frequent repetitions of
_mauruuru_ (which is the Tahitian “thank you”), I proceeded to make
signs that I desired to go for a sail in his canoe.

His face lighted with pleasure and he uttered the single word, “Tahaa,”
turning at the same time and pointing to the lofty, cloud-draped peaks
of an island three miles away—the island of Tahaa. It was fair wind
over, but a head-beat back. Now I did not want to go to Tahaa. I had
letters to deliver in Raiatea, and officials to see, and there was
Charmian down below getting ready to go ashore. By insistent signs I
indicated that I desired no more than a short sail on the lagoon. Quick
was the disappointment in his face, yet smiling was the acquiescence.

“Come on for a sail,” I called below to Charmian. “But put on your
swimming suit. It’s going to be wet.”

It wasn’t real. It was a dream. That canoe slid over the water like a
streak of silver. I climbed out on the outrigger and supplied the
weight to hold her down, while Tehei (pronounced Tayhayee) supplied the
nerve. He, too, in the puffs, climbed part way out on the outrigger, at
the same time steering with both hands on a large paddle and holding
the mainsheet with his foot.

“Ready about!” he called.

I carefully shifted my weight inboard in order to maintain the
equilibrium as the sail emptied.

“Hard a-lee!” he called, shooting her into the wind.

I slid out on the opposite side over the water on a spar lashed across
the canoe, and we were full and away on the other tack.

“All right,” said Tehei.

Those three phrases, “Ready about,” “Hard a-lee,” and “All right,”
comprised Tehei’s English vocabulary and led me to suspect that at some
time he had been one of a Kanaka crew under an American captain.
Between the puffs I made signs to him and repeatedly and
interrogatively uttered the word _sailor_. Then I tried it in atrocious
French. _Marin_ conveyed no meaning to him; nor did _matelot_. Either
my French was bad, or else he was not up in it. I have since concluded
that both conjectures were correct. Finally, I began naming over the
adjacent islands. He nodded that he had been to them. By the time my
quest reached Tahiti, he caught my drift. His thought-processes were
almost visible, and it was a joy to watch him think. He nodded his head
vigorously. Yes, he had been to Tahiti, and he added himself names of
islands such as Tikihau, Rangiroa, and Fakarava, thus proving that he
had sailed as far as the Paumotus—undoubtedly one of the crew of a
trading schooner.

After our short sail, when he had returned on board, he by signs
inquired the destination of the _Snark_, and when I had mentioned
Samoa, Fiji, New Guinea, France, England, and California in their
geographical sequence, he said “Samoa,” and by gestures intimated that
he wanted to go along. Whereupon I was hard put to explain that there
was no room for him. “_Petit bateau_” finally solved it, and again the
disappointment in his face was accompanied by smiling acquiescence, and
promptly came the renewed invitation to accompany him to Tahaa.

Charmian and I looked at each other. The exhilaration of the ride we
had taken was still upon us. Forgotten were the letters to Raiatea, the
officials we had to visit. Shoes, a shirt, a pair of trousers,
cigarettes, matches, and a book to read were hastily crammed into a
biscuit tin and wrapped in a rubber blanket, and we were over the side
and into the canoe.

“When shall we look for you?” Warren called, as the wind filled the
sail and sent Tehei and me scurrying out on the outrigger.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “When we get back, as near as I can figure
it.”

And away we went. The wind had increased, and with slacked sheets we
ran off before it. The freeboard of the canoe was no more than two and
a half inches, and the little waves continually lapped over the side.
This required bailing. Now bailing is one of the principal functions of
the vahine. Vahine is the Tahitian for woman, and Charmian being the
only vahine aboard, the bailing fell appropriately to her. Tehei and I
could not very well do it, the both of us being perched part way out on
the outrigger and busied with keeping the canoe bottom-side down. So
Charmian bailed, with a wooden scoop of primitive design, and so well
did she do it that there were occasions when she could rest off almost
half the time.

Raiatea and Tahaa are unique in that they lie inside the same
encircling reef. Both are volcanic islands, ragged of sky-line, with
heaven-aspiring peaks and minarets. Since Raiatea is thirty miles in
circumference, and Tahaa fifteen miles, some idea may be gained of the
magnitude of the reef that encloses them. Between them and the reef
stretches from one to two miles of water, forming a beautiful lagoon.
The huge Pacific seas, extending in unbroken lines sometimes a mile or
half as much again in length, hurl themselves upon the reef,
overtowering and falling upon it with tremendous crashes, and yet the
fragile coral structure withstands the shock and protects the land.
Outside lies destruction to the mightiest ship afloat. Inside reigns
the calm of untroubled water, whereon a canoe like ours can sail with
no more than a couple of inches of free-board.

We flew over the water. And such water!—clear as the clearest
spring-water, and crystalline in its clearness, all intershot with a
maddening pageant of colours and rainbow ribbons more magnificently
gorgeous than any rainbow. Jade green alternated with turquoise,
peacock blue with emerald, while now the canoe skimmed over reddish
purple pools, and again over pools of dazzling, shimmering white where
pounded coral sand lay beneath and upon which oozed monstrous
sea-slugs. One moment we were above wonder-gardens of coral, wherein
coloured fishes disported, fluttering like marine butterflies; the next
moment we were dashing across the dark surface of deep channels, out of
which schools of flying fish lifted their silvery flight; and a third
moment we were above other gardens of living coral, each more wonderful
than the last. And above all was the tropic, trade-wind sky with its
fluffy clouds racing across the zenith and heaping the horizon with
their soft masses.

Before we were aware, we were close in to Tahaa (pronounced Tah-hah-ah,
with equal accents), and Tehei was grinning approval of the vahine’s
proficiency at bailing. The canoe grounded on a shallow shore, twenty
feet from land, and we waded out on a soft bottom where big slugs
curled and writhed under our feet and where small octopuses advertised
their existence by their superlative softness when stepped upon. Close
to the beach, amid cocoanut palms and banana trees, erected on stilts,
built of bamboo, with a grass-thatched roof, was Tehei’s house. And out
of the house came Tehei’s vahine, a slender mite of a woman, kindly
eyed and Mongolian of feature—when she was not North American Indian.
“Bihaura,” Tehei called her, but he did not pronounce it according to
English notions of spelling. Spelled “Bihaura,” it sounded like
Bee-ah-oo-rah, with every syllable sharply emphasized.

She took Charmian by the hand and led her into the house, leaving Tehei
and me to follow. Here, by sign-language unmistakable, we were informed
that all they possessed was ours. No hidalgo was ever more generous in
the expression of giving, while I am sure that few hidalgos were ever
as generous in the actual practice. We quickly discovered that we dare
not admire their possessions, for whenever we did admire a particular
object it was immediately presented to us. The two vahines, according
to the way of vahines, got together in a discussion and examination of
feminine fripperies, while Tehei and I, manlike, went over
fishing-tackle and wild-pig-hunting, to say nothing of the device
whereby bonitas are caught on forty-foot poles from double canoes.
Charmian admired a sewing basket—the best example she had seen of
Polynesian basketry; it was hers. I admired a bonita hook, carved in
one piece from a pearl-shell; it was mine. Charmian was attracted by a
fancy braid of straw sennit, thirty feet of it in a roll, sufficient to
make a hat of any design one wished; the roll of sennit was hers. My
gaze lingered upon a poi-pounder that dated back to the old stone days;
it was mine. Charmian dwelt a moment too long on a wooden poi-bowl,
canoe-shaped, with four legs, all carved in one piece of wood; it was
hers. I glanced a second time at a gigantic cocoanut calabash; it was
mine. Then Charmian and I held a conference in which we resolved to
admire no more—not because it did not pay well enough, but because it
paid too well. Also, we were already racking our brains over the
contents of the _Snark_ for suitable return presents. Christmas is an
easy problem compared with a Polynesian giving-feast.

We sat on the cool porch, on Bihaura’s best mats while dinner was
preparing, and at the same time met the villagers. In twos and threes
and groups they strayed along, shaking hands and uttering the Tahitian
word of greeting—Ioarana, pronounced yo-rah-nah. The men, big strapping
fellows, were in loin-cloths, with here and there no shirt, while the
women wore the universal _ahu_, a sort of adult pinafore that flows in
graceful lines from the shoulders to the ground. Sad to see was the
elephantiasis that afflicted some of them. Here would be a comely woman
of magnificent proportions, with the port of a queen, yet marred by one
arm four times—or a dozen times—the size of the other. Beside her might
stand a six-foot man, erect, mighty-muscled, bronzed, with the body of
a god, yet with feet and calves so swollen that they ran together,
forming legs, shapeless, monstrous, that were for all the world like
elephant legs.

No one seems really to know the cause of the South Sea elephantiasis.
One theory is that it is caused by the drinking of polluted water.
Another theory attributes it to inoculation through mosquito bites. A
third theory charges it to predisposition plus the process of
acclimatization. On the other hand, no one that stands in finicky dread
of it and similar diseases can afford to travel in the South Seas.
There will be occasions when such a one must drink water. There may be
also occasions when the mosquitoes let up biting. But every precaution
of the finicky one will be useless. If he runs barefoot across the
beach to have a swim, he will tread where an elephantiasis case trod a
few minutes before. If he closets himself in his own house, yet every
bit of fresh food on his table will have been subjected to the
contamination, be it flesh, fish, fowl, or vegetable. In the public
market at Papeete two known lepers run stalls, and heaven alone knows
through what channels arrive at that market the daily supplies of fish,
fruit, meat, and vegetables. The only happy way to go through the South
Seas is with a careless poise, without apprehension, and with a
Christian Science-like faith in the resplendent fortune of your own
particular star. When you see a woman, afflicted with elephantiasis
wringing out cream from cocoanut meat with her naked hands, drink and
reflect how good is the cream, forgetting the hands that pressed it
out. Also, remember that diseases such as elephantiasis and leprosy do
not seem to be caught by contact.

We watched a Raratongan woman, with swollen, distorted limbs, prepare
our cocoanut cream, and then went out to the cook-shed where Tehei and
Bihaura were cooking dinner. And then it was served to us on a
dry-goods box in the house. Our hosts waited until we were done and
then spread their table on the floor. But our table! We were certainly
in the high seat of abundance. First, there was glorious raw fish,
caught several hours before from the sea and steeped the intervening
time in lime-juice diluted with water. Then came roast chicken. Two
cocoanuts, sharply sweet, served for drink. There were bananas that
tasted like strawberries and that melted in the mouth, and there was
banana-poi that made one regret that his Yankee forebears ever
attempted puddings. Then there was boiled yam, boiled taro, and roasted
_feis_, which last are nothing more or less than large mealy, juicy,
red-coloured cooking bananas. We marvelled at the abundance, and, even
as we marvelled, a pig was brought on, a whole pig, a sucking pig,
swathed in green leaves and roasted upon the hot stones of a native
oven, the most honourable and triumphant dish in the Polynesian
cuisine. And after that came coffee, black coffee, delicious coffee,
native coffee grown on the hillsides of Tahaa.

Tehei’s fishing-tackle fascinated me, and after we arranged to go
fishing, Charmian and I decided to remain all night. Again Tehei
broached Samoa, and again my _petit bateau_ brought the disappointment
and the smile of acquiescence to his face. Bora Bora was my next port.
It was not so far away but that cutters made the passage back and forth
between it and Raiatea. So I invited Tehei to go that far with us on
the _Snark_. Then I learned that his wife had been born on Bora Bora
and still owned a house there. She likewise was invited, and
immediately came the counter invitation to stay with them in their
house in Born Bora. It was Monday. Tuesday we would go fishing and
return to Raiatea. Wednesday we would sail by Tahaa and off a certain
point, a mile away, pick up Tehei and Bihaura and go on to Bora Bora.
All this we arranged in detail, and talked over scores of other things
as well, and yet Tehei knew three phrases in English, Charmian and I
knew possibly a dozen Tahitian words, and among the four of us there
were a dozen or so French words that all understood. Of course, such
polyglot conversation was slow, but, eked out with a pad, a lead
pencil, the face of a clock Charmian drew on the back of a pad, and
with ten thousand and one gestures, we managed to get on very nicely.

At the first moment we evidenced an inclination for bed the visiting
natives, with soft _Iaoranas_, faded away, and Tehei and Bihaura
likewise faded away. The house consisted of one large room, and it was
given over to us, our hosts going elsewhere to sleep. In truth, their
castle was ours. And right here, I want to say that of all the
entertainment I have received in this world at the hands of all sorts
of races in all sorts of places, I have never received entertainment
that equalled this at the hands of this brown-skinned couple of Tahaa.
I do not refer to the presents, the free-handed generousness, the high
abundance, but to the fineness of courtesy and consideration and tact,
and to the sympathy that was real sympathy in that it was
understanding. They did nothing they thought ought to be done for us,
according to their standards, but they did what they divined we wanted
to be done for us, while their divination was most successful. It would
be impossible to enumerate the hundreds of little acts of consideration
they performed during the few days of our intercourse. Let it suffice
for me to say that of all hospitality and entertainment I have known,
in no case was theirs not only not excelled, but in no case was it
quite equalled. Perhaps the most delightful feature of it was that it
was due to no training, to no complex social ideals, but that it was
the untutored and spontaneous outpouring from their hearts.

The next morning we went fishing, that is, Tehei, Charmian, and I did,
in the coffin-shaped canoe; but this time the enormous sail was left
behind. There was no room for sailing and fishing at the same time in
that tiny craft. Several miles away, inside the reef, in a channel
twenty fathoms deep, Tehei dropped his baited hooks and rock-sinkers.
The bait was chunks of octopus flesh, which he bit out of a live
octopus that writhed in the bottom of the canoe. Nine of these lines he
set, each line attached to one end of a short length of bamboo floating
on the surface. When a fish was hooked, the end of the bamboo was drawn
under the water. Naturally, the other end rose up in the air, bobbing
and waving frantically for us to make haste. And make haste we did,
with whoops and yells and driving paddles, from one signalling bamboo
to another, hauling up from the depths great glistening beauties from
two to three feet in length.

Steadily, to the eastward, an ominous squall had been rising and
blotting out the bright trade-wind sky. And we were three miles to
leeward of home. We started as the first wind-gusts whitened the water.
Then came the rain, such rain as only the tropics afford, where every
tap and main in the sky is open wide, and when, to top it all, the very
reservoir itself spills over in blinding deluge. Well, Charmian was in
a swimming suit, I was in pyjamas, and Tehei wore only a loin-cloth.
Bihaura was on the beach waiting for us, and she led Charmian into the
house in much the same fashion that the mother leads in the naughty
little girl who has been playing in mud-puddles.

It was a change of clothes and a dry and quiet smoke while _kai-kai_
was preparing. _Kai-kai_, by the way, is the Polynesian for “food” or
“to eat,” or, rather, it is one form of the original root, whatever it
may have been, that has been distributed far and wide over the vast
area of the Pacific. It is _kai_ in the Marquesas, Raratonga, Manahiki,
Niuë, Fakaafo, Tonga, New Zealand, and Vaté. In Tahiti “to eat” changes
to _amu_, in Hawaii and Samoa to _ai_, in Ban to _kana_, in Nina to
_kana_, in Nongone to _kaka_, and in New Caledonia to _ki_. But by
whatsoever sound or symbol, it was welcome to our ears after that long
paddle in the rain. Once more we sat in the high seat of abundance
until we regretted that we had been made unlike the image of the
giraffe and the camel.

Again, when we were preparing to return to the _Snark_, the sky to
windward turned black and another squall swooped down. But this time it
was little rain and all wind. It blew hour after hour, moaning and
screeching through the palms, tearing and wrenching and shaking the
frail bamboo dwelling, while the outer reef set up a mighty thundering
as it broke the force of the swinging seas. Inside the reef, the
lagoon, sheltered though it was, was white with fury, and not even
Tehei’s seamanship could have enabled his slender canoe to live in such
a welter.

By sunset, the back of the squall had broken though it was still too
rough for the canoe. So I had Tehei find a native who was willing to
venture his cutter across to Raiatea for the outrageous sum of two
dollars, Chili, which is equivalent in our money to ninety cents. Half
the village was told off to carry presents, with which Tehei and
Bihaura speeded their parting guests—captive chickens, fishes dressed
and swathed in wrappings of green leaves, great golden bunches of
bananas, leafy baskets spilling over with oranges and limes, alligator
pears (the butter-fruit, also called the _avoca_), huge baskets of
yams, bunches of taro and cocoanuts, and last of all, large branches
and trunks of trees—firewood for the _Snark_.

While on the way to the cutter we met the only white man on Tahaa, and
of all men, George Lufkin, a native of New England! Eighty-six years of
age he was, sixty-odd of which, he said, he had spent in the Society
Islands, with occasional absences, such as the gold rush to Eldorado in
’forty-nine and a short period of ranching in California near Tulare.
Given no more than three months by the doctors to live, he had returned
to his South Seas and lived to eighty-six and to chuckle over the
doctors aforesaid, who were all in their graves. _Fee-fee_ he had,
which is the native for elephantiasis and which is pronounced fay-fay.
A quarter of a century before, the disease had fastened upon him, and
it would remain with him until he died. We asked him about kith and
kin. Beside him sat a sprightly damsel of sixty, his daughter. “She is
all I have,” he murmured plaintively, “and she has no children living.”

The cutter was a small, sloop-rigged affair, but large it seemed
alongside Tehei’s canoe. On the other hand, when we got out on the
lagoon and were struck by another heavy wind-squall, the cutter became
liliputian, while the _Snark_, in our imagination, seemed to promise
all the stability and permanence of a continent. They were good
boatmen. Tehei and Bihaura had come along to see us home, and the
latter proved a good boatwoman herself. The cutter was well ballasted,
and we met the squall under full sail. It was getting dark, the lagoon
was full of coral patches, and we were carrying on. In the height of
the squall we had to go about, in order to make a short leg to windward
to pass around a patch of coral no more than a foot under the surface.
As the cutter filled on the other tack, and while she was in that
“dead” condition that precedes gathering way, she was knocked flat.
Jib-sheet and main-sheet were let go, and she righted into the wind.
Three times she was knocked down, and three times the sheets were flung
loose, before she could get away on that tack.

By the time we went about again, darkness had fallen. We were now to
windward of the _Snark_, and the squall was howling. In came the jib,
and down came the mainsail, all but a patch of it the size of a
pillow-slip. By an accident we missed the _Snark_, which was riding it
out to two anchors, and drove aground upon the inshore coral. Running
the longest line on the _Snark_ by means of the launch, and after an
hour’s hard work, we heaved the cutter off and had her lying safely
astern.

The day we sailed for Bora Bora the wind was light, and we crossed the
lagoon under power to the point where Tehei and Bihaura were to meet
us. As we made in to the land between the coral banks, we vainly
scanned the shore for our friends. There was no sign of them.

“We can’t wait,” I said. “This breeze won’t fetch us to Bora Bora by
dark, and I don’t want to use any more gasolene than I have to.”

You see, gasolene in the South Seas is a problem. One never knows when
he will be able to replenish his supply.

But just then Tehei appeared through the trees as he came down to the
water. He had peeled off his shirt and was wildly waving it. Bihaura
apparently was not ready. Once aboard, Tehei informed us by signs that
we must proceed along the land till we got opposite to his house. He
took the wheel and conned the _Snark_ through the coral, around point
after point till we cleared the last point of all. Cries of welcome
went up from the beach, and Bihaura, assisted by several of the
villagers, brought off two canoe-loads of abundance. There were yams,
taro, _feis_, breadfruit, cocoanuts, oranges, limes, pineapples,
watermelons, alligator pears, pomegranates, fish, chickens galore
crowing and cackling and laying eggs on our decks, and a live pig that
squealed infernally and all the time in apprehension of imminent
slaughter.

Under the rising moon we came in through the perilous passage of the
reef of Bora Bora and dropped anchor off Vaitapé village. Bihaura, with
housewifely anxiety, could not get ashore too quickly to her house to
prepare more abundance for us. While the launch was taking her and
Tehei to the little jetty, the sound of music and of singing drifted
across the quiet lagoon. Throughout the Society Islands we had been
continually informed that we would find the Bora Borans very jolly.
Charmian and I went ashore to see, and on the village green, by
forgotten graves on the beach, found the youths and maidens dancing,
flower-garlanded and flower-bedecked, with strange phosphorescent
flowers in their hair that pulsed and dimmed and glowed in the
moonlight. Farther along the beach we came upon a huge grass house,
oval-shaped seventy feet in length, where the elders of the village
were singing _himines_. They, too, were flower-garlanded and jolly, and
they welcomed us into the fold as little lost sheep straying along from
outer darkness.

Early next morning Tehei was on board, with a string of fresh-caught
fish and an invitation to dinner for that evening. On the way to
dinner, we dropped in at the _himine_ house. The same elders were
singing, with here or there a youth or maiden that we had not seen the
previous night. From all the signs, a feast was in preparation.
Towering up from the floor was a mountain of fruits and vegetables,
flanked on either side by numerous chickens tethered by cocoanut
strips. After several _himines_ had been sung, one of the men arose and
made oration. The oration was made to us, and though it was Greek to
us, we knew that in some way it connected us with that mountain of
provender.

“Can it be that they are presenting us with all that?” Charmian
whispered.

“Impossible,” I muttered back. “Why should they be giving it to us?
Besides, there is no room on the _Snark_ for it. We could not eat a
tithe of it. The rest would spoil. Maybe they are inviting us to the
feast. At any rate, that they should give all that to us is
impossible.”

Nevertheless we found ourselves once more in the high seat of
abundance. The orator, by gestures unmistakable, in detail presented
every item in the mountain to us, and next he presented it to us _in
toto_. It was an embarrassing moment. What would you do if you lived in
a hall bedroom and a friend gave you a white elephant? Our _Snark_ was
no more than a hall bedroom, and already she was loaded down with the
abundance of Tahaa. This new supply was too much. We blushed, and
stammered, and _mauruuru’d_. We _mauruuru’d_ with repeated _nui’s_
which conveyed the largeness and overwhelmingness of our thanks. At the
same time, by signs, we committed the awful breach of etiquette of not
accepting the present. The _himine_ singers’ disappointment was plainly
betrayed, and that evening, aided by Tehei, we compromised by accepting
one chicken, one bunch of bananas, one bunch of taro, and so on down
the list.

But there was no escaping the abundance. I bought a dozen chickens from
a native out in the country, and the following day he delivered
thirteen chickens along with a canoe-load of fruit. The French
storekeeper presented us with pomegranates and lent us his finest
horse. The gendarme did likewise, lending us a horse that was the very
apple of his eye. And everybody sent us flowers. The _Snark_ was a
fruit-stand and a greengrocer’s shop masquerading under the guise of a
conservatory. We went around flower-garlanded all the time. When the
_himine_ singers came on board to sing, the maidens kissed us welcome,
and the crew, from captain to cabin-boy, lost its heart to the maidens
of Bora Bora. Tehei got up a big fishing expedition in our honour, to
which we went in a double canoe, paddled by a dozen strapping Amazons.
We were relieved that no fish were caught, else the _Snark_ would have
sunk at her moorings.

The days passed, but the abundance did not diminish. On the day of
departure, canoe after canoe put off to us. Tehei brought cucumbers and
a young _papaia_ tree burdened with splendid fruit. Also, for me he
brought a tiny, double canoe with fishing apparatus complete. Further,
he brought fruits and vegetables with the same lavishness as at Tahaa.
Bihaura brought various special presents for Charmian, such as
silk-cotton pillows, fans, and fancy mats. The whole population brought
fruits, flowers, and chickens. And Bihaura added a live sucking pig.
Natives whom I did not remember ever having seen before strayed over
the rail and presented me with such things as fish-poles, fish-lines,
and fish-hooks carved from pearl-shell.

As the _Snark_ sailed out through the reef, she had a cutter in tow.
This was the craft that was to take Bihaura back to Tahaa—but not
Tehei. I had yielded at last, and he was one of the crew of the
_Snark_. When the cutter cast off and headed east, and the _Snark’s_
bow turned toward the west, Tehei knelt down by the cockpit and
breathed a silent prayer, the tears flowing down his cheeks. A week
later, when Martin got around to developing and printing, he showed
Tehei some of the photographs. And that brown-skinned son of Polynesia,
gazing on the pictured lineaments of his beloved Bihaura broke down in
tears.

But the abundance! There was so much of it. We could not work the
_Snark_ for the fruit that was in the way. She was festooned with
fruit. The life-boat and launch were packed with it. The awning-guys
groaned under their burdens. But once we struck the full trade-wind
sea, the disburdening began. At every roll the _Snark_ shook overboard
a bunch or so of bananas and cocoanuts, or a basket of limes. A golden
flood of limes washed about in the lee-scuppers. The big baskets of
yams burst, and pineapples and pomegranates rolled back and forth. The
chickens had got loose and were everywhere, roosting on the awnings,
fluttering and squawking out on the jib-boom, and essaying the perilous
feat of balancing on the spinnaker-boom. They were wild chickens,
accustomed to flight. When attempts were made to catch them, they flew
out over the ocean, circled about, and came back. Sometimes they did
not come back. And in the confusion, unobserved, the little sucking pig
got loose and slipped overboard.

“On the arrival of strangers, every man endeavoured to obtain one as a
friend and carry him off to his own habitation, where he is treated
with the greatest kindness by the inhabitants of the district: they
place him on a high seat and feed him with abundance of the finest
foods.”




CHAPTER XIII
THE STONE-FISHING OF BORA BORA


At five in the morning the conches began to blow. From all along the
beach the eerie sounds arose, like the ancient voice of War, calling to
the fishermen to arise and prepare to go forth. We on the _Snark_
likewise arose, for there could be no sleep in that mad din of conches.
Also, we were going stone-fishing, though our preparations were few.

_Tautai-taora_ is the name for stone-fishing, _tautai_ meaning a
“fishing instrument.” And _taora_ meaning “thrown.” But _tautai-taora_,
in combination, means “stone-fishing,” for a stone is the instrument
that is thrown. Stone-fishing is in reality a fish-drive, similar in
principle to a rabbit-drive or a cattle-drive, though in the latter
affairs drivers and driven operate in the same medium, while in the
fish-drive the men must be in the air to breathe and the fish are
driven through the water. It does not matter if the water is a hundred
feet deep, the men, working on the surface, drive the fish just the
same.

This is the way it is done. The canoes form in line, one hundred to two
hundred feet apart. In the bow of each canoe a man wields a stone,
several pounds in weight, which is attached to a short rope. He merely
smites the water with the stone, pulls up the stone, and smites again.
He goes on smiting. In the stern of each canoe another man paddles,
driving the canoe ahead and at the same time keeping it in the
formation. The line of canoes advances to meet a second line a mile or
two away, the ends of the lines hurrying together to form a circle, the
far edge of which is the shore. The circle begins to contract upon the
shore, where the women, standing in a long row out into the sea, form a
fence of legs, which serves to break any rushes of the frantic fish. At
the right moment when the circle is sufficiently small, a canoe dashes
out from shore, dropping overboard a long screen of cocoanut leaves and
encircling the circle, thus reinforcing the palisade of legs. Of
course, the fishing is always done inside the reef in the lagoon.

“_Très jolie_,” the gendarme said, after explaining by signs and
gestures that thousands of fish would be caught of all sizes from
minnows to sharks, and that the captured fish would boil up and upon
the very sand of the beach.

It is a most successful method of fishing, while its nature is more
that of an outing festival, rather than of a prosaic, food-getting
task. Such fishing parties take place about once a month at Bora Bora,
and it is a custom that has descended from old time. The man who
originated it is not remembered. They always did this thing. But one
cannot help wondering about that forgotten savage of the long ago, into
whose mind first flashed this scheme of easy fishing, of catching huge
quantities of fish without hook, or net, or spear. One thing about him
we can know: he was a radical. And we can be sure that he was
considered feather-brained and anarchistic by his conservative
tribesmen. His difficulty was much greater than that of the modern
inventor, who has to convince in advance only one or two capitalists.
That early inventor had to convince his whole tribe in advance, for
without the co-operation of the whole tribe the device could not be
tested. One can well imagine the nightly pow-wow-ings in that primitive
island world, when he called his comrades antiquated moss-backs, and
they called him a fool, a freak, and a crank, and charged him with
having come from Kansas. Heaven alone knows at what cost of grey hairs
and expletives he must finally have succeeded in winning over a
sufficient number to give his idea a trial. At any rate, the experiment
succeeded. It stood the test of truth—it worked! And thereafter, we can
be confident, there was no man to be found who did not know all along
that it was going to work.

Our good friends, Tehei and Bihaura, who were giving the fishing in our
honour, had promised to come for us. We were down below when the call
came from on deck that they were coming. We dashed up the companionway,
to be overwhelmed by the sight of the Polynesian barge in which we were
to ride. It was a long double canoe, the canoes lashed together by
timbers with an interval of water between, and the whole decorated with
flowers and golden grasses. A dozen flower-crowned Amazons were at the
paddles, while at the stern of each canoe was a strapping steersman.
All were garlanded with gold and crimson and orange flowers, while each
wore about the hips a scarlet _pareu_. There were flowers everywhere,
flowers, flowers, flowers, without end. The whole thing was an orgy of
colour. On the platform forward resting on the bows of the canoes,
Tehei and Bihaura were dancing. All voices were raised in a wild song
or greeting.

Three times they circled the _Snark_ before coming alongside to take
Charmian and me on board. Then it was away for the fishing-grounds, a
five-mile paddle dead to windward. “Everybody is jolly in Bora Bora,”
is the saying throughout the Society Islands, and we certainly found
everybody jolly. Canoe songs, shark songs, and fishing songs were sung
to the dipping of the paddles, all joining in on the swinging choruses.
Once in a while the cry _Mao_! was raised, whereupon all strained like
mad at the paddles. Mao is shark, and when the deep-sea tigers appear,
the natives paddle for dear life for the shore, knowing full well the
danger they run of having their frail canoes overturned and of being
devoured. Of course, in our case there were no sharks, but the cry of
_mao_ was used to incite them to paddle with as much energy as if a
shark were really after them. “Hoé! Hoé!” was another cry that made us
foam through the water.

On the platform Tehei and Bihaura danced, accompanied by songs and
choruses or by rhythmic hand-clappings. At other times a musical
knocking of the paddles against the sides of the canoes marked the
accent. A young girl dropped her paddle, leaped to the platform, and
danced a hula, in the midst of which, still dancing, she swayed and
bent, and imprinted on our cheeks the kiss of welcome. Some of the
songs, or _himines_, were religious, and they were especially
beautiful, the deep basses of the men mingling with the altos and thin
sopranos of the women and forming a combination of sound that
irresistibly reminded one of an organ. In fact, “kanaka organ” is the
scoffer’s description of the _himine_. On the other hand, some of the
chants or ballads were very barbaric, having come down from
pre-Christian times.

And so, singing, dancing, paddling, these joyous Polynesians took us to
the fishing. The gendarme, who is the French ruler of Bora Bora,
accompanied us with his family in a double canoe of his own, paddled by
his prisoners; for not only is he gendarme and ruler, but he is jailer
as well, and in this jolly land when anybody goes fishing, all go
fishing. A score of single canoes, with outriggers, paddled along with
us. Around a point a big sailing-canoe appeared, running beautifully
before the wind as it bore down to greet us. Balancing precariously on
the outrigger, three young men saluted us with a wild rolling of drums.

The next point, half a mile farther on, brought us to the place of
meeting. Here the launch, which had been brought along by Warren and
Martin, attracted much attention. The Bora Borans could not see what
made it go. The canoes were drawn upon the sand, and all hands went
ashore to drink cocoanuts and sing and dance. Here our numbers were
added to by many who arrived on foot from near-by dwellings, and a
pretty sight it was to see the flower-crowned maidens, hand in hand and
two by two, arriving along the sands.

“They usually make a big catch,” Allicot, a half-caste trader, told us.
“At the finish the water is fairly alive with fish. It is lots of fun.
Of course you know all the fish will be yours.”

“All?” I groaned, for already the _Snark_ was loaded down with lavish
presents, by the canoe-load, of fruits, vegetables, pigs, and chickens.

“Yes, every last fish,” Allicot answered. “You see, when the surround
is completed, you, being the guest of honour, must take a harpoon and
impale the first one. It is the custom. Then everybody goes in with
their hands and throws the catch out on the sand. There will be a
mountain of them. Then one of the chiefs will make a speech in which he
presents you with the whole kit and boodle. But you don’t have to take
them all. You get up and make a speech, selecting what fish you want
for yourself and presenting all the rest back again. Then everybody
says you are very generous.”

“But what would be the result if I kept the whole present?” I asked.

“It has never happened,” was the answer. “It is the custom to give and
give back again.”

The native minister started with a prayer for success in the fishing,
and all heads were bared. Next, the chief fishermen told off the canoes
and allotted them their places. Then it was into the canoes and away.
No women, however, came along, with the exception of Bihaura and
Charmian. In the old days even they would have been tabooed. The women
remained behind to wade out into the water and form the palisade of
legs.

The big double canoe was left on the beach, and we went in the launch.
Half the canoes paddled off to leeward, while we, with the other half,
headed to windward a mile and a half, until the end of our line was in
touch with the reef. The leader of the drive occupied a canoe midway in
our line. He stood erect, a fine figure of an old man, holding a flag
in his hand. He directed the taking of positions and the forming of the
two lines by blowing on a conch. When all was ready, he waved his flag
to the right. With a single splash the throwers in every canoe on that
side struck the water with their stones. While they were hauling them
back—a matter of a moment, for the stones scarcely sank beneath the
surface—the flag waved to the left, and with admirable precision every
stone on that side struck the water. So it went, back and forth, right
and left; with every wave of the flag a long line of concussion smote
the lagoon. At the same time the paddles drove the canoes forward and
what was being done in our line was being done in the opposing line of
canoes a mile and more away.

On the bow of the launch, Tehei, with eyes fixed on the leader, worked
his stone in unison with the others. Once, the stone slipped from the
rope, and the same instant Tehei went overboard after it. I do not know
whether or not that stone reached the bottom, but I do know that the
next instant Tehei broke surface alongside with the stone in his hand.
I noticed this same accident occur several times among the near-by
canoes, but in each instance the thrower followed the stone and brought
it back.

The reef ends of our lines accelerated, the shore ends lagged, all
under the watchful supervision of the leader, until at the reef the two
lines joined, forming the circle. Then the contraction of the circle
began, the poor frightened fish harried shoreward by the streaks of
concussion that smote the water. In the same fashion elephants are
driven through the jungle by motes of men who crouch in the long
grasses or behind trees and make strange noises. Already the palisade
of legs had been built. We could see the heads of the women, in a long
line, dotting the placid surface of the lagoon. The tallest women went
farthest out, thus, with the exception of those close inshore, nearly
all were up to their necks in the water.

Still the circle narrowed, till canoes were almost touching. There was
a pause. A long canoe shot out from shore, following the line of the
circle. It went as fast as paddles could drive. In the stern a man
threw overboard the long, continuous screen of cocoanut leaves. The
canoes were no longer needed, and overboard went the men to reinforce
the palisade with their legs. For the screen was only a screen, and not
a net, and the fish could dash through it if they tried. Hence the need
for legs that ever agitated the screen, and for hands that splashed and
throats that yelled. Pandemonium reigned as the trap tightened.

But no fish broke surface or collided against the hidden legs. At last
the chief fisherman entered the trap. He waded around everywhere,
carefully. But there were no fish boiling up and out upon the sand.
There was not a sardine, not a minnow, not a polly-wog. Something must
have been wrong with that prayer; or else, and more likely, as one
grizzled fellow put it, the wind was not in its usual quarter and the
fish were elsewhere in the lagoon. In fact, there had been no fish to
drive.

“About once in five these drives are failures,” Allicot consoled us.

Well, it was the stone-fishing that had brought us to Bora Bora, and it
was our luck to draw the one chance in five. Had it been a raffle, it
would have been the other way about. This is not pessimism. Nor is it
an indictment of the plan of the universe. It is merely that feeling
which is familiar to most fishermen at the empty end of a hard day.




CHAPTER XIV
THE AMATEUR NAVIGATOR


There are captains and captains, and some mighty fine captains, I know;
but the run of the captains on the _Snark_ has been remarkably
otherwise. My experience with them has been that it is harder to take
care of one captain on a small boat than of two small babies. Of
course, this is no more than is to be expected. The good men have
positions, and are not likely to forsake their
one-thousand-to-fifteen-thousand-ton billets for the _Snark_ with her
ten tons net. The _Snark_ has had to cull her navigators from the
beach, and the navigator on the beach is usually a congenital
inefficient—the sort of man who beats about for a fortnight trying
vainly to find an ocean isle and who returns with his schooner to
report the island sunk with all on board, the sort of man whose temper
or thirst for strong waters works him out of billets faster than he can
work into them.

The _Snark_ has had three captains, and by the grace of God she shall
have no more. The first captain was so senile as to be unable to give a
measurement for a boom-jaw to a carpenter. So utterly agedly helpless
was he, that he was unable to order a sailor to throw a few buckets of
salt water on the _Snark’s_ deck. For twelve days, at anchor, under an
overhead tropic sun, the deck lay dry. It was a new deck. It cost me
one hundred and thirty-five dollars to recaulk it. The second captain
was angry. He was born angry. “Papa is always angry,” was the
description given him by his half-breed son. The third captain was so
crooked that he couldn’t hide behind a corkscrew. The truth was not in
him, common honesty was not in him, and he was as far away from fair
play and square-dealing as he was from his proper course when he nearly
wrecked the _Snark_ on the Ring-gold Isles.

It was at Suva, in the Fijis, that I discharged my third and last
captain and took up gain the rôle of amateur navigator. I had essayed
it once before, under my first captain, who, out of San Francisco,
jumped the _Snark_ so amazingly over the chart that I really had to
find out what was doing. It was fairly easy to find out, for we had a
run of twenty-one hundred miles before us. I knew nothing of
navigation; but, after several hours of reading up and half an hour’s
practice with the sextant, I was able to find the _Snark’s_ latitude by
meridian observation and her longitude by the simple method known as
“equal altitudes.” This is not a correct method. It is not even a safe
method, but my captain was attempting to navigate by it, and he was the
only one on board who should have been able to tell me that it was a
method to be eschewed. I brought the _Snark_ to Hawaii, but the
conditions favoured me. The sun was in northern declination and nearly
overhead. The legitimate “chronometer-sight” method of ascertaining the
longitude I had not heard of—yes, I had heard of it. My first captain
mentioned it vaguely, but after one or two attempts at practice of it
he mentioned it no more.

I had time in the Fijis to compare my chronometer with two other
chronometers. Two weeks previous, at Pago Pago, in Samoa, I had asked
my captain to compare our chronometer with the chronometers on the
American cruiser, the _Annapolis_. This he told me he had done—of
course he had done nothing of the sort; and he told me that the
difference he had ascertained was only a small fraction of a second. He
told it to me with finely simulated joy and with words of praise for my
splendid time-keeper. I repeat it now, with words of praise for his
splendid and unblushing unveracity. For behold, fourteen days later, in
Suva, I compared the chronometer with the one on the Atua, an
Australian steamer, and found that mine was thirty-one seconds fast.
Now thirty-one seconds of time, converted into arc, equals seven and
one-quarter miles. That is to say, if I were sailing west, in the
night-time, and my position, according to my dead reckoning from my
afternoon chronometer sight, was shown to be seven miles off the land,
why, at that very moment I would be crashing on the reef. Next I
compared my chronometer with Captain Wooley’s. Captain Wooley, the
harbourmaster, gives the time to Suva, firing a gun signal at twelve,
noon, three times a week. According to his chronometer mine was
fifty-nine seconds fast, which is to say, that, sailing west, I should
be crashing on the reef when I thought I was fifteen miles off from it.

I compromised by subtracting thirty-one seconds from the total of my
chronometer’s losing error, and sailed away for Tanna, in the New
Hebrides, resolved, when nosing around the land on dark nights, to bear
in mind the other seven miles I might be out according to Captain
Wooley’s instrument. Tanna lay some six hundred miles west-southwest
from the Fijis, and it was my belief that while covering that distance
I could quite easily knock into my head sufficient navigation to get me
there. Well, I got there, but listen first to my troubles. Navigation
_is_ easy, I shall always contend that; but when a man is taking three
gasolene engines and a wife around the world and is writing hard every
day to keep the engines supplied with gasolene and the wife with pearls
and volcanoes, he hasn’t much time left in which to study navigation.
Also, it is bound to be easier to study said science ashore, where
latitude and longitude are unchanging, in a house whose position never
alters, than it is to study navigation on a boat that is rushing along
day and night toward land that one is trying to find and which he is
liable to find disastrously at a moment when he least expects it.

To begin with, there are the compasses and the setting of the courses.
We sailed from Suva on Saturday afternoon, June 6, 1908, and it took us
till after dark to run the narrow, reef-ridden passage between the
islands of Viti Levu and Mbengha. The open ocean lay before me. There
was nothing in the way with the exception of Vatu Leile, a miserable
little island that persisted in poking up through the sea some twenty
miles to the west-southwest—just where I wanted to go. Of course, it
seemed quite simple to avoid it by steering a course that would pass it
eight or ten miles to the north. It was a black night, and we were
running before the wind. The man at the wheel must be told what
direction to steer in order to miss Vatu Leile. But what direction? I
turned me to the navigation books. “True Course” I lighted upon. The
very thing! What I wanted was the true course. I read eagerly on:

“The True Course is the angle made with the meridian by a straight line
on the chart drawn to connect the ship’s position with the place bound
to.”

Just what I wanted. The _Snark’s_ position was at the western entrance
of the passage between Viti Levu and Mbengha. The immediate place she
was bound to was a place on the chart ten miles north of Vatu Leile. I
pricked that place off on the chart with my dividers, and with my
parallel rulers found that west-by-south was the true course. I had but
to give it to the man at the wheel and the _Snark_ would win her way to
the safety of the open sea.

But alas and alack and lucky for me, I read on. I discovered that the
compass, that trusty, everlasting friend of the mariner, was not given
to pointing north. It varied. Sometimes it pointed east of north,
sometimes west of north, and on occasion it even turned tail on north
and pointed south. The variation at the particular spot on the globe
occupied by the _Snark_ was 9° 40′ easterly. Well, that had to be taken
into account before I gave the steering course to the man at the wheel.
I read:

“The Correct Magnetic Course is derived from the True Course by
applying to it the variation.”

Therefore, I reasoned, if the compass points 9° 40′ eastward of north,
and I wanted to sail due north, I should have to steer 9° 40′ westward
of the north indicated by the compass and which was not north at all.
So I added 9° 40′ to the left of my west-by-south course, thus getting
my correct Magnetic Course, and was ready once more to run to open sea.

Again alas and alack! The Correct Magnetic Course was not the Compass
Course. There was another sly little devil lying in wait to trip me up
and land me smashing on the reefs of Vatu Leile. This little devil went
by the name of Deviation. I read:

“The Compass Course is the course to steer, and is derived from the
Correct Magnetic Course by applying to it the Deviation.”

Now Deviation is the variation in the needle caused by the distribution
of iron on board of ship. This purely local variation I derived from
the deviation card of my standard compass and then applied to the
Correct Magnetic Course. The result was the Compass Course. And yet,
not yet. My standard compass was amidships on the companionway. My
steering compass was aft, in the cockpit, near the wheel. When the
steering compass pointed west-by-south three-quarters-south (the
steering course), the standard compass pointed west-one-half-north,
which was certainly not the steering course. I kept the _Snark_ up till
she was heading west-by-south-three-quarters-south on the standard
compass, which gave, on the steering compass, south-west-by-west.

The foregoing operations constitute the simple little matter of setting
a course. And the worst of it is that one must perform every step
correctly or else he will hear “Breakers ahead!” some pleasant night, a
nice sea-bath, and be given the delightful diversion of fighting his
way to the shore through a horde of man-eating sharks.

Just as the compass is tricky and strives to fool the mariner by
pointing in all directions except north, so does that guide post of the
sky, the sun, persist in not being where it ought to be at a given
time. This carelessness of the sun is the cause of more trouble—at
least it caused trouble for me. To find out where one is on the earth’s
surface, he must know, at precisely the same time, where the sun is in
the heavens. That is to say, the sun, which is the timekeeper for men,
doesn’t run on time. When I discovered this, I fell into deep gloom and
all the Cosmos was filled with doubt. Immutable laws, such as
gravitation and the conservation of energy, became wobbly, and I was
prepared to witness their violation at any moment and to remain
unastonished. For see, if the compass lied and the sun did not keep its
engagements, why should not objects lose their mutual attraction and
why should not a few bushel baskets of force be annihilated? Even
perpetual motion became possible, and I was in a frame of mind prone to
purchase Keeley-Motor stock from the first enterprising agent that
landed on the _Snark’s_ deck. And when I discovered that the earth
really rotated on its axis 366 times a year, while there were only 365
sunrises and sunsets, I was ready to doubt my own identity.

This is the way of the sun. It is so irregular that it is impossible
for man to devise a clock that will keep the sun’s time. The sun
accelerates and retards as no clock could be made to accelerate and
retard. The sun is sometimes ahead of its schedule; at other times it
is lagging behind; and at still other times it is breaking the speed
limit in order to overtake itself, or, rather, to catch up with where
it ought to be in the sky. In this last case it does not slow down
quick enough, and, as a result, goes dashing ahead of where it ought to
be. In fact, only four days in a year do the sun and the place where
the sun ought to be happen to coincide. The remaining 361 days the sun
is pothering around all over the shop. Man, being more perfect than the
sun, makes a clock that keeps regular time. Also, he calculates how far
the sun is ahead of its schedule or behind. The difference between the
sun’s position and the position where the sun ought to be if it were a
decent, self-respecting sun, man calls the Equation of Time. Thus, the
navigator endeavouring to find his ship’s position on the sea, looks in
his chronometer to see where precisely the sun ought to be according to
the Greenwich custodian of the sun. Then to that location he applies
the Equation of Time and finds out where the sun ought to be and isn’t.
This latter location, along with several other locations, enables him
to find out what the man from Kansas demanded to know some years ago.

The _Snark_ sailed from Fiji on Saturday, June 6, and the next day,
Sunday, on the wide ocean, out of sight of land, I proceeded to
endeavour to find out my position by a chronometer sight for longitude
and by a meridian observation for latitude. The chronometer sight was
taken in the morning when the sun was some 21° above the horizon. I
looked in the Nautical Almanac and found that on that very day, June 7,
the sun was behind time 1 minute and 26 seconds, and that it was
catching up at a rate of 14.67 seconds per hour. The chronometer said
that at the precise moment of taking the sun’s altitude it was
twenty-five minutes after eight o’clock at Greenwich. From this date it
would seem a schoolboy’s task to correct the Equation of Time.
Unfortunately, I was not a schoolboy. Obviously, at the middle of the
day, at Greenwich, the sun was 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time.
Equally obviously, if it were eleven o’clock in the morning, the sun
would be 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time plus 14.67 seconds. If it
were ten o’clock in the morning, twice 14.67 seconds would have to be
added. And if it were 8: 25 in the morning, then 3½ times 14.67 seconds
would have to be added. Quite clearly, then, if, instead of being 8:25
A.M., it were 8:25 P.M., then 8½ times 14.67 seconds would have to be,
not added, but _subtracted_; for, if, at noon, the sun were 1 minute
and 26 seconds behind time, and if it were catching up with where it
ought to be at the rate of 14.67 seconds per hour, then at 8.25 P.M. it
would be much nearer where it ought to be than it had been at noon.

So far, so good. But was that 8:25 of the chronometer A.M., or P.M.? I
looked at the _Snark’s_ clock. It marked 8:9, and it was certainly A.M.
for I had just finished breakfast. Therefore, if it was eight in the
morning on board the _Snark_, the eight o’clock of the chronometer
(which was the time of the day at Greenwich) must be a different eight
o’clock from the _Snark’s_ eight o’clock. But what eight o’clock was
it? It can’t be the eight o’clock of this morning, I reasoned;
therefore, it must be either eight o’clock this evening or eight
o’clock last night.

It was at this juncture that I fell into the bottomless pit of
intellectual chaos. We are in east longitude, I reasoned, therefore we
are ahead of Greenwich. If we are behind Greenwich, then to-day is
yesterday; if we are ahead of Greenwich, then yesterday is to-day, but
if yesterday is to-day, what under the sun is to-day!—to-morrow?
Absurd! Yet it must be correct. When I took the sun this morning at
8:25, the sun’s custodians at Greenwich were just arising from dinner
last night.

“Then correct the Equation of Time for yesterday,” says my logical
mind.

“But to-day is to-day,” my literal mind insists. “I must correct the
sun for to-day and not for yesterday.”

“Yet to-day is yesterday,” urges my logical mind.

“That’s all very well,” my literal mind continues, “If I were in
Greenwich I might be in yesterday. Strange things happen in Greenwich.
But I know as sure as I am living that I am here, now, in to-day, June
7, and that I took the sun here, now, to-day, June 7. Therefore, I must
correct the sun here, now, to-day, June 7.”

“Bosh!” snaps my logical mind. “Lecky says—”

“Never mind what Lecky says,” interrupts my literal mind. “Let me tell
you what the Nautical Almanac says. The Nautical Almanac says that
to-day, June 7, the sun was 1 minute and 26 seconds behind time and
catching up at the rate of 14.67 seconds per hour. It says that
yesterday, June 6, the sun was 1 minute and 36 seconds behind time and
catching up at the rate of 15.66 seconds per hour. You see, it is
preposterous to think of correcting to-day’s sun by yesterday’s
time-table.”

“Fool!”

“Idiot!”

Back and forth they wrangle until my head is whirling around and I am
ready to believe that I am in the day after the last week before next.

I remembered a parting caution of the Suva harbour-master: “_In east
longitude take from the Nautical Almanac the elements for the preceding
day_.”

Then a new thought came to me. I corrected the Equation of Time for
Sunday and for Saturday, making two separate operations of it, and lo,
when the results were compared, there was a difference only of
four-tenths of a second. I was a changed man. I had found my way out of
the crypt. The _Snark_ was scarcely big enough to hold me and my
experience. Four-tenths of a second would make a difference of only
one-tenth of a mile—a cable-length!

All went merrily for ten minutes, when I chanced upon the following
rhyme for navigators:
“Greenwich time least
Longitude east;
Greenwich best,
Longitude west.”

Heavens! The _Snark’s_ time was not as good as Greenwich time. When it
was 8:25 at Greenwich, on board the _Snark_ it was only 8:9. “Greenwich
time best, longitude west.” There I was. In west longitude beyond a
doubt.

“Silly!” cries my literal mind. “You are 8:9 A.M. and Greenwich is 8:25
P.M.”

“Very well,” answers my logical mind. “To be correct, 8.25 P.M. is
really twenty hours and twenty-five minutes, and that is certainly
better than eight hours and nine minutes. No, there is no discussion;
you are in west longitude.”

Then my literal mind triumphs.

“We sailed from Suva, in the Fijis, didn’t we?” it demands, and logical
mind agrees. “And Suva is in east longitude?” Again logical mind
agrees. “And we sailed west (which would take us deeper into east
longitude), didn’t we? Therefore, and you can’t escape it, we are in
east longitude.”

“Greenwich time best, longitude west,” chants my logical mind; “and you
must grant that twenty hours and twenty-five minutes is better than
eight hours and nine minutes.”

“All right,” I break in upon the squabble; “we’ll work up the sight and
then we’ll see.”

And work it up I did, only to find that my longitude was 184° west.

“I told you so,” snorts my logical mind.

I am dumbfounded. So is my literal mind, for several minutes. Then it
enounces:

“But there is no 184° west longitude, nor east longitude, nor any other
longitude. The largest meridian is 180° as you ought to know very
well.”

Having got this far, literal mind collapses from the brain strain,
logical mind is dumb flabbergasted; and as for me, I get a bleak and
wintry look in my eyes and go around wondering whether I am sailing
toward the China coast or the Gulf of Darien.

Then a thin small voice, which I do not recognize, coming from nowhere
in particular in my consciousness, says:

“The total number of degrees is 360. Subtract the 184° west longitude
from 360°, and you will get 176° east longitude.”

“That is sheer speculation,” objects literal mind; and logical mind
remonstrates. “There is no rule for it.”

“Darn the rules!” I exclaim. “Ain’t I here?”

“The thing is self-evident,” I continue. “184° west longitude means a
lapping over in east longitude of four degrees. Besides I have been in
east longitude all the time. I sailed from Fiji, and Fiji is in east
longitude. Now I shall chart my position and prove it by dead
reckoning.”

But other troubles and doubts awaited me. Here is a sample of one. In
south latitude, when the sun is in northern declination, chronometer
sights may be taken early in the morning. I took mine at eight o’clock.
Now, one of the necessary elements in working up such a sight is
latitude. But one gets latitude at twelve o’clock, noon, by a meridian
observation. It is clear that in order to work up my eight o’clock
chronometer sight I must have my eight o’clock latitude. Of course, if
the _Snark_ were sailing due west at six knots per hour, for the
intervening four hours her latitude would not change. But if she were
sailing due south, her latitude would change to the tune of twenty-four
miles. In which case a simple addition or subtraction would convert the
twelve o’clock latitude into eight o’clock latitude. But suppose the
_Snark_ were sailing southwest. Then the traverse tables must be
consulted.

This is the illustration. At eight A.M. I took my chronometer sight. At
the same moment the distance recorded on the log was noted. At twelve
M., when the sight for latitude was taken, I again noted the log, which
showed me that since eight o’clock the _Snark_ had run 24 miles. Her
true course had been west ¾ south. I entered Table I, in the distance
column, on the page for ¾ point courses, and stopped at 24, the number
of miles run. Opposite, in the next two columns, I found that the
_Snark_ had made 3.5 miles of southing or latitude, and that she had
made 23.7 miles of westing. To find my eight o’clock’ latitude was
easy. I had but to subtract 3.5 miles from my noon latitude. All the
elements being present, I worked up my longitude.

But this was my eight o’clock longitude. Since then, and up till noon,
I had made 23.7 miles of westing. What was my noon longitude? I
followed the rule, turning to Traverse Table No. II. Entering the
table, according to rule, and going through every detail, according to
rule, I found the difference of longitude for the four hours to be 25
miles. I was aghast. I entered the table again, according to rule; I
entered the table half a dozen times, according to rule, and every time
found that my difference of longitude was 25 miles. I leave it to you,
gentle reader. Suppose you had sailed 24 miles and that you had covered
3.5 miles of latitude, then how could you have covered 25 miles of
longitude? Even if you had sailed due west 24 miles, and not changed
your latitude, how could you have changed your longitude 25 miles? In
the name of human reason, how could you cover one mile more of
longitude than the total number of miles you had sailed?

It was a reputable traverse table, being none other than Bowditch’s.
The rule was simple (as navigators’ rules go); I had made no error. I
spent an hour over it, and at the end still faced the glaring
impossibility of having sailed 24 miles, in the course of which I
changed my latitude 3.5 miles and my longitude 25 miles. The worst of
it was that there was nobody to help me out. Neither Charmian nor
Martin knew as much as I knew about navigation. And all the time the
_Snark_ was rushing madly along toward Tanna, in the New Hebrides.
Something had to be done.

How it came to me I know not—call it an inspiration if you will; but
the thought arose in me: if southing is latitude, why isn’t westing
longitude? Why should I have to change westing into longitude? And then
the whole beautiful situation dawned upon me. The meridians of
longitude are 60 miles (nautical) apart at the equator. At the poles
they run together. Thus, if I should travel up the 180° meridian of
longitude until I reached the North Pole, and if the astronomer at
Greenwich travelled up the 0 meridian of longitude to the North Pole,
then, at the North Pole, we could shake hands with each other, though
before we started for the North Pole we had been some thousands of
miles apart. Again: if a degree of longitude was 60 miles wide at the
equator, and if the same degree, at the point of the Pole, had no
width, then somewhere between the Pole and the equator that degree
would be half a mile wide, and at other places a mile wide, two miles
wide, ten miles wide, thirty miles wide, ay, and sixty miles wide.

All was plain again. The _Snark_ was in 19° south latitude. The world
wasn’t as big around there as at the equator. Therefore, every mile of
westing at 19° south was more than a minute of longitude; for sixty
miles were sixty miles, but sixty minutes are sixty miles only at the
equator. George Francis Train broke Jules Verne’s record of around the
world. But any man that wants can break George Francis Train’s record.
Such a man would need only to go, in a fast steamer, to the latitude of
Cape Horn, and sail due east all the way around. The world is very
small in that latitude, and there is no land in the way to turn him out
of his course. If his steamer maintained sixteen knots, he would
circumnavigate the globe in just about forty days.

But there are compensations. On Wednesday evening, June 10, I brought
up my noon position by dead reckoning to eight P.M. Then I projected
the _Snark’s_ course and saw that she would strike Futuna, one of the
easternmost of the New Hebrides, a volcanic cone two thousand feet high
that rose out of the deep ocean. I altered the course so that the
_Snark_ would pass ten miles to the northward. Then I spoke to Wada,
the cook, who had the wheel every morning from four to six.

“Wada San, to-morrow morning, your watch, you look sharp on weather-bow
you see land.”

And then I went to bed. The die was cast. I had staked my reputation as
a navigator. Suppose, just suppose, that at daybreak there was no land.
Then, where would my navigation be? And where would we be? And how
would we ever find ourselves? or find any land? I caught ghastly
visions of the _Snark_ sailing for months through ocean solitudes and
seeking vainly for land while we consumed our provisions and sat down
with haggard faces to stare cannibalism in the face.

I confess my sleep was not
“ . . . like a summer sky
That held the music of a lark.”

Rather did “I waken to the voiceless dark,” and listen to the creaking
of the bulkheads and the rippling of the sea alongside as the _Snark_
logged steadily her six knots an hour. I went over my calculations
again and again, striving to find some mistake, until my brain was in
such fever that it discovered dozens of mistakes. Suppose, instead of
being sixty miles off Futuna, that my navigation was all wrong and that
I was only six miles off? In which case my course would be wrong, too,
and for all I knew the _Snark_ might be running straight at Futuna. For
all I knew the _Snark_ might strike Futuna the next moment. I almost
sprang from the bunk at that thought; and, though I restrained myself,
I know that I lay for a moment, nervous and tense, waiting for the
shock.

My sleep was broken by miserable nightmares. Earthquake seemed the
favourite affliction, though there was one man, with a bill, who
persisted in dunning me throughout the night. Also, he wanted to fight;
and Charmian continually persuaded me to let him alone. Finally,
however, the man with the everlasting dun ventured into a dream from
which Charmian was absent. It was my opportunity, and we went at it,
gloriously, all over the sidewalk and street, until he cried enough.
Then I said, “Now how about that bill?” Having conquered, I was willing
to pay. But the man looked at me and groaned. “It was all a mistake,”
he said; “the bill is for the house next door.”

That settled him, for he worried my dreams no more; and it settled me,
too, for I woke up chuckling at the episode. It was three in the
morning. I went up on deck. Henry, the Rapa islander, was steering. I
looked at the log. It recorded forty-two miles. The _Snark_ had not
abated her six-knot gait, and she had not struck Futuna yet. At
half-past five I was again on deck. Wada, at the wheel, had seen no
land. I sat on the cockpit rail, a prey to morbid doubt for a quarter
of an hour. Then I saw land, a small, high piece of land, just where it
ought to be, rising from the water on the weather-bow. At six o’clock I
could clearly make it out to be the beautiful volcanic cone of Futuna.
At eight o’clock, when it was abreast, I took its distance by the
sextant and found it to be 9.3 miles away. And I had elected to pass it
10 miles away!

Then, to the south, Aneiteum rose out of the sea, to the north, Aniwa,
and, dead ahead, Tanna. There was no mistaking Tanna, for the smoke of
its volcano was towering high in the sky. It was forty miles away, and
by afternoon, as we drew close, never ceasing to log our six knots, we
saw that it was a mountainous, hazy land, with no apparent openings in
its coast-line. I was looking for Port Resolution, though I was quite
prepared to find that as an anchorage, it had been destroyed. Volcanic
earthquakes had lifted its bottom during the last forty years, so that
where once the largest ships rode at anchor there was now, by last
reports, scarcely space and depth sufficient for the _Snark_. And why
should not another convulsion, since the last report, have closed the
harbour completely?

I ran in close to the unbroken coast, fringed with rocks awash upon
which the crashing trade-wind sea burst white and high. I searched with
my glasses for miles, but could see no entrance. I took a compass
bearing of Futuna, another of Aniwa, and laid them off on the chart.
Where the two bearings crossed was bound to be the position of the
_Snark_. Then, with my parallel rulers, I laid down a course from the
_Snark’s_ position to Port Resolution. Having corrected this course for
variation and deviation, I went on deck, and lo, the course directed me
towards that unbroken coast-line of bursting seas. To my Rapa
islander’s great concern, I held on till the rocks awash were an eighth
of a mile away.

“No harbour this place,” he announced, shaking his head ominously.

But I altered the course and ran along parallel with the coast.
Charmian was at the wheel. Martin was at the engine, ready to throw on
the propeller. A narrow slit of an opening showed up suddenly. Through
the glasses I could see the seas breaking clear across. Henry, the Rapa
man, looked with troubled eyes; so did Tehei, the Tahaa man.

“No passage, there,” said Henry. “We go there, we finish quick, sure.”

I confess I thought so, too; but I ran on abreast, watching to see if
the line of breakers from one side the entrance did not overlap the
line from the other side. Sure enough, it did. A narrow place where the
sea ran smooth appeared. Charmian put down the wheel and steadied for
the entrance. Martin threw on the engine, while all hands and the cook
sprang to take in sail.

A trader’s house showed up in the bight of the bay. A geyser, on the
shore, a hundred yards away; spouted a column of steam. To port, as we
rounded a tiny point, the mission station appeared.

“Three fathoms,” cried Wada at the lead-line. “Three fathoms,” “two
fathoms,” came in quick succession.

Charmian put the wheel down, Martin stopped the engine, and the _Snark_
rounded to and the anchor rumbled down in three fathoms. Before we
could catch our breaths a swarm of black Tannese was alongside and
aboard—grinning, apelike creatures, with kinky hair and troubled eyes,
wearing safety-pins and clay-pipes in their slitted ears: and as for
the rest, wearing nothing behind and less than that before. And I don’t
mind telling that that night, when everybody was asleep, I sneaked up
on deck, looked out over the quiet scene, and gloated—yes, gloated—over
my navigation.




CHAPTER XV
CRUISING IN THE SOLOMONS


“Why not come along now?” said Captain Jansen to us, at Penduffryn, on
the island of Guadalcanar.

Charmian and I looked at each other and debated silently for half a
minute. Then we nodded our heads simultaneously. It is a way we have of
making up our minds to do things; and a very good way it is when one
has no temperamental tears to shed over the last tin-of condensed milk
when it has capsized. (We are living on tinned goods these days, and
since mind is rumoured to be an emanation of matter, our similes are
naturally of the packing-house variety.)

“You’d better bring your revolvers along, and a couple of rifles,” said
Captain Jansen. “I’ve got five rifles aboard, though the one Mauser is
without ammunition. Have you a few rounds to spare?”

We brought our rifles on board, several handfuls of Mauser cartridges,
and Wada and Nakata, the _Snark’s_ cook and cabin-boy respectively.
Wada and Nakata were in a bit of a funk. To say the least, they were
not enthusiastic, though never did Nakata show the white feather in the
face of danger. The Solomon Islands had not dealt kindly with them. In
the first place, both had suffered from Solomon sores. So had the rest
of us (at the time, I was nursing two fresh ones on a diet of corrosive
sublimate); but the two Japanese had had more than their share. And the
sores are not nice. They may be described as excessively active ulcers.
A mosquito bite, a cut, or the slightest abrasion, serves for lodgment
of the poison with which the air seems to be filled. Immediately the
ulcer commences to eat. It eats in every direction, consuming skin and
muscle with astounding rapidity. The pin-point ulcer of the first day
is the size of a dime by the second day, and by the end of the week a
silver dollar will not cover it.

Worse than the sores, the two Japanese had been afflicted with Solomon
Island fever. Each had been down repeatedly with it, and in their weak,
convalescent moments they were wont to huddle together on the portion
of the _Snark_ that happened to be nearest to faraway Japan, and to
gaze yearningly in that direction.

But worst of all, they were now brought on board the _Minota_ for a
recruiting cruise along the savage coast of Malaita. Wada, who had the
worse funk, was sure that he would never see Japan again, and with
bleak, lack-lustre eyes he watched our rifles and ammunition going on
board the _Minota_. He knew about the _Minota_ and her Malaita cruises.
He knew that she had been captured six months before on the Malaita
coast, that her captain had been chopped to pieces with tomahawks, and
that, according to the barbarian sense of equity on that sweet isle,
she owed two more heads. Also, a labourer on Penduffryn Plantation, a
Malaita boy, had just died of dysentery, and Wada knew that Penduffryn
had been put in the debt of Malaita by one more head. Furthermore, in
stowing our luggage away in the skipper’s tiny cabin, he saw the axe
gashes on the door where the triumphant bushmen had cut their way in.
And, finally, the galley stove was without a pipe—said pipe having been
part of the loot.

The _Minota_ was a teak-built, Australian yacht, ketch-rigged, long and
lean, with a deep fin-keel, and designed for harbour racing rather than
for recruiting blacks. When Charmian and I came on board, we found her
crowded. Her double boat’s crew, including substitutes, was fifteen,
and she had a score and more of “return” boys, whose time on the
plantations was served and who were bound back to their bush villages.
To look at, they were certainly true head-hunting cannibals. Their
perforated nostrils were thrust through with bone and wooden bodkins
the size of lead-pencils. Numbers of them had punctured the extreme
meaty point of the nose, from which protruded, straight out, spikes of
turtle-shell or of beads strung on stiff wire. A few had further
punctured their noses with rows of holes following the curves of the
nostrils from lip to point. Each ear of every man had from two to a
dozen holes in it—holes large enough to carry wooden plugs three inches
in diameter down to tiny holes in which were carried clay-pipes and
similar trifles. In fact, so many holes did they possess that they
lacked ornaments to fill them; and when, the following day, as we
neared Malaita, we tried out our rifles to see that they were in
working order, there was a general scramble for the empty cartridges,
which were thrust forthwith into the many aching voids in our
passengers’ ears.

At the time we tried out our rifles we put up our barbed wire railings.
The _Minota_, crown-decked, without any house, and with a rail six
inches high, was too accessible to boarders. So brass stanchions were
screwed into the rail and a double row of barbed wire stretched around
her from stem to stern and back again. Which was all very well as a
protection from savages, but it was mighty uncomfortable to those on
board when the _Minota_ took to jumping and plunging in a sea-way. When
one dislikes sliding down upon the lee-rail barbed wire, and when he
dares not catch hold of the weather-rail barbed wire to save himself
from sliding, and when, with these various disinclinations, he finds
himself on a smooth flush-deck that is heeled over at an angle of
forty-five degrees, some of the delights of Solomon Islands cruising
may be comprehended. Also, it must be remembered, the penalty of a fall
into the barbed wire is more than the mere scratches, for each scratch
is practically certain to become a venomous ulcer. That caution will
not save one from the wire was evidenced one fine morning when we were
running along the Malaita coast with the breeze on our quarter. The
wind was fresh, and a tidy sea was making. A black boy was at the
wheel. Captain Jansen, Mr. Jacobsen (the mate), Charmian, and I had
just sat down on deck to breakfast. Three unusually large seas caught
us. The boy at the wheel lost his head. Three times the _Minota_ was
swept. The breakfast was rushed over the lee-rail. The knives and forks
went through the scuppers; a boy aft went clean overboard and was
dragged back; and our doughty skipper lay half inboard and half out,
jammed in the barbed wire. After that, for the rest of the cruise, our
joint use of the several remaining eating utensils was a splendid
example of primitive communism. On the _Eugenie_, however, it was even
worse, for we had but one teaspoon among four of us—but the _Eugenie_
is another story.

Our first port was Su’u on the west coast of Malaita. The Solomon
Islands are on the fringe of things. It is difficult enough sailing on
dark nights through reef-spiked channels and across erratic currents
where there are no lights to guide (from northwest to southeast the
Solomons extend across a thousand miles of sea, and on all the
thousands of miles of coasts there is not one lighthouse); but the
difficulty is seriously enhanced by the fact that the land itself is
not correctly charted. Su’u is an example. On the Admiralty chart of
Malaita the coast at this point runs a straight, unbroken line. Yet
across this straight, unbroken line the _Minota_ sailed in twenty
fathoms of water. Where the land was alleged to be, was a deep
indentation. Into this we sailed, the mangroves closing about us, till
we dropped anchor in a mirrored pond. Captain Jansen did not like the
anchorage. It was the first time he had been there, and Su’u had a bad
reputation. There was no wind with which to get away in case of attack,
while the crew could be bushwhacked to a man if they attempted to tow
out in the whale-boat. It was a pretty trap, if trouble blew up.

“Suppose the _Minota_ went ashore—what would you do?” I asked.

“She’s not going ashore,” was Captain Jansen’s answer.

“But just in case she did?” I insisted. He considered for a moment and
shifted his glance from the mate buckling on a revolver to the boat’s
crew climbing into the whale-boat each man with a rifle.

“We’d get into the whale-boat, and get out of here as fast as God’d let
us,” came the skipper’s delayed reply.

He explained at length that no white man was sure of his _Malaita_ crew
in a tight place; that the bushmen looked upon all wrecks as their
personal property; that the bushmen possessed plenty of Snider rifles;
and that he had on board a dozen “return” boys for Su’u who were
certain to join in with their friends and relatives ashore when it came
to looting the _Minota_.

The first work of the whale-boat was to take the “return” boys and
their trade-boxes ashore. Thus one danger was removed. While this was
being done, a canoe came alongside manned by three naked savages. And
when I say naked, I mean naked. Not one vestige of clothing did they
have on, unless nose-rings, ear-plugs, and shell armlets be accounted
clothing. The head man in the canoe was an old chief, one-eyed, reputed
to be friendly, and so dirty that a boat-scraper would have lost its
edge on him. His mission was to warn the skipper against allowing any
of his people to go ashore. The old fellow repeated the warning again
that night.

In vain did the whale-boat ply about the shores of the bay in quest of
recruits. The bush was full of armed natives; all willing enough to
talk with the recruiter, but not one would engage to sign on for three
years’ plantation labour at six pounds per year. Yet they were anxious
enough to get our people ashore. On the second day they raised a smoke
on the beach at the head of the bay. This being the customary signal of
men desiring to recruit, the boat was sent. But nothing resulted. No
one recruited, nor were any of our men lured ashore. A little later we
caught glimpses of a number of armed natives moving about on the beach.

Outside of these rare glimpses, there was no telling how many might be
lurking in the bush. There was no penetrating that primeval jungle with
the eye. In the afternoon, Captain Jansen, Charmian, and I went
dynamiting fish. Each one of the boat’s crew carried a Lee-Enfield.
“Johnny,” the native recruiter, had a Winchester beside him at the
steering sweep. We rowed in close to a portion of the shore that looked
deserted. Here the boat was turned around and backed in; in case of
attack, the boat would be ready to dash away. In all the time I was on
Malaita I never saw a boat land bow on. In fact, the recruiting vessels
use two boats—one to go in on the beach, armed, of course, and the
other to lie off several hundred feet and “cover” the first boat. The
_Minota_, however, being a small vessel, did not carry a covering boat.

We were close in to the shore and working in closer, stern-first, when
a school of fish was sighted. The fuse was ignited and the stick of
dynamite thrown. With the explosion, the surface of the water was
broken by the flash of leaping fish. At the same instant the woods
broke into life. A score of naked savages, armed with bows and arrows,
spears, and Sniders, burst out upon the shore. At the same moment our
boat’s crew lifted their rifles. And thus the opposing parties faced
each other, while our extra boys dived over after the stunned fish.

Three fruitless days were spent at Su’u. The _Minota_ got no recruits
from the bush, and the bushmen got no heads from the _Minota_. In fact,
the only one who got anything was Wada, and his was a nice dose of
fever. We towed out with the whale-boat, and ran along the coast to
Langa Langa, a large village of salt-water people, built with
prodigious labour on a lagoon sand-bank—literally _built_ up, an
artificial island reared as a refuge from the blood-thirsty bushmen.
Here, also, on the shore side of the lagoon, was Binu, the place where
the _Minota_ was captured half a year previously and her captain killed
by the bushmen. As we sailed in through the narrow entrance, a canoe
came alongside with the news that the man-of-war had just left that
morning after having burned three villages, killed some thirty pigs,
and drowned a baby. This was the Cambrian, Captain Lewes commanding. He
and I had first met in Korea during the Japanese-Russian War, and we
had been crossing each other’s trail ever since without ever a meeting.
The day the _Snark_ sailed into Suva, in the Fijis, we made out the
_Cambrian_ going out. At Vila, in the New Hebrides, we missed each
other by one day. We passed each other in the night-time off the island
of Santo. And the day the _Cambrian_ arrived at Tulagi, we sailed from
Penduffryn, a dozen miles away. And here at Langa Langa we had missed
by several hours.

The _Cambrian_ had come to punish the murderers of the _Minota’s_
captain, but what she had succeeded in doing we did not learn until
later in the day, when a Mr. Abbot, a missionary, came alongside in his
whale-boat. The villages had been burned and the pigs killed. But the
natives had escaped personal harm. The murderers had not been captured,
though the _Minota’s_ flag and other of her gear had been recovered.
The drowning of the baby had come about through a misunderstanding.
Chief Johnny, of Binu, had declined to guide the landing party into the
bush, nor could any of his men be induced to perform that office.
Whereupon Captain Lewes, righteously indignant, had told Chief Johnny
that he deserved to have his village burned. Johnny’s _bêche de mer_
English did not include the word “deserve.” So his understanding of it
was that his village was to be burned anyway. The immediate stampede of
the inhabitants was so hurried that the baby was dropped into the
water. In the meantime Chief Johnny hastened to Mr. Abbot. Into his
hand he put fourteen sovereigns and requested him to go on board the
_Cambrian_ and buy Captain Lewes off. Johnny’s village was not burned.
Nor did Captain Lewes get the fourteen sovereigns, for I saw them later
in Johnny’s possession when he boarded the _Minota_. The excuse Johnny
gave me for not guiding the landing party was a big boil which he
proudly revealed. His real reason, however, and a perfectly valid one,
though he did not state it, was fear of revenge on the part of the
bushmen. Had he, or any of his men, guided the marines, he could have
looked for bloody reprisals as soon as the _Cambrian_ weighed anchor.

As an illustration of conditions in the Solomons, Johnny’s business on
board was to turn over, for a tobacco consideration, the sprit,
mainsail, and jib of a whale-boat. Later in the day, a Chief Billy came
on board and turned over, for a tobacco consideration, the mast and
boom. This gear belonged to a whale-boat which Captain Jansen had
recovered the previous trip of the _Minota_. The whale-boat belonged to
Meringe Plantation on the island of Ysabel. Eleven contract labourers,
Malaita men and bushmen at that, had decided to run away. Being
bushmen, they knew nothing of salt water nor of the way of a boat in
the sea. So they persuaded two natives of San Cristoval, salt-water
men, to run away with them. It served the San Cristoval men right. They
should have known better. When they had safely navigated the stolen
boat to Malaita, they had their heads hacked off for their pains. It
was this boat and gear that Captain Jansen had recovered.

Not for nothing have I journeyed all the way to the Solomons. At last I
have seen Charmian’s proud spirit humbled and her imperious queendom of
femininity dragged in the dust. It happened at Langa Langa, ashore, on
the manufactured island which one cannot see for the houses. Here,
surrounded by hundreds of unblushing naked men, women, and children, we
wandered about and saw the sights. We had our revolvers strapped on,
and the boat’s crew, fully armed, lay at the oars, stern in; but the
lesson of the man-of-war was too recent for us to apprehend trouble. We
walked about everywhere and saw everything until at last we approached
a large tree trunk that served as a bridge across a shallow estuary.
The blacks formed a wall in front of us and refused to let us pass. We
wanted to know why we were stopped. The blacks said we could go on. We
misunderstood, and started. Explanations became more definite. Captain
Jansen and I, being men, could go on. But no Mary was allowed to wade
around that bridge, much less cross it. “Mary” is bêche de mer for
woman. Charmian was a Mary. To her the bridge was tambo, which is the
native for taboo. Ah, how my chest expanded! At last my manhood was
vindicated. In truth I belonged to the lordly sex. Charmian could
trapse along at our heels, but we were MEN, and we could go right over
that bridge while she would have to go around by whale-boat.

Now I should not care to be misunderstood by what follows; but it is a
matter of common knowledge in the Solomons that attacks of fever are
often brought on by shock. Inside half an hour after Charmian had been
refused the right of way, she was being rushed aboard the _Minota_,
packed in blankets, and dosed with quinine. I don’t know what kind of
shock had happened to Wada and Nakata, but at any rate they were down
with fever as well. The Solomons might be healthfuller.

Also, during the attack of fever, Charmian developed a Solomon sore. It
was the last straw. Every one on the _Snark_ had been afflicted except
her. I had thought that I was going to lose my foot at the ankle by one
exceptionally malignant boring ulcer. Henry and Tehei, the Tahitian
sailors, had had numbers of them. Wada had been able to count his by
the score. Nakata had had single ones three inches in length. Martin
had been quite certain that necrosis of his shinbone had set in from
the roots of the amazing colony he elected to cultivate in that
locality. But Charmian had escaped. Out of her long immunity had been
bred contempt for the rest of us. Her ego was flattered to such an
extent that one day she shyly informed me that it was all a matter of
pureness of blood. Since all the rest of us cultivated the sores, and
since she did not—well, anyway, hers was the size of a silver dollar,
and the pureness of her blood enabled her to cure it after several
weeks of strenuous nursing. She pins her faith to corrosive sublimate.
Martin swears by iodoform. Henry uses lime-juice undiluted. And I
believe that when corrosive sublimate is slow in taking hold, alternate
dressings of peroxide of hydrogen are just the thing. There are white
men in the Solomons who stake all upon boracic acid, and others who are
prejudiced in favour of lysol. I also have the weakness of a panacea.
It is California. I defy any man to get a Solomon Island sore in
California.

We ran down the lagoon from Langa Langa, between mangrove swamps,
through passages scarcely wider than the _Minota_, and past the reef
villages of Kaloka and Auki. Like the founders of Venice, these
salt-water men were originally refugees from the mainland. Too weak to
hold their own in the bush, survivors of village massacres, they fled
to the sand-banks of the lagoon. These sand-banks they built up into
islands. They were compelled to seek their provender from the sea, and
in time they became salt-water men. They learned the ways of the fish
and the shellfish, and they invented hooks and lines, nets and
fish-traps. They developed canoe-bodies. Unable to walk about, spending
all their time in the canoes, they became thick-armed and
broad-shouldered, with narrow waists and frail spindly legs.
Controlling the sea-coast, they became wealthy, trade with the interior
passing largely through their hands. But perpetual enmity exists
between them and the bushmen. Practically their only truces are on
market-days, which occur at stated intervals, usually twice a week. The
bushwomen and the salt-water women do the bartering. Back in the bush,
a hundred yards away, fully armed, lurk the bushmen, while to seaward,
in the canoes, are the salt-water men. There are very rare instances of
the market-day truces being broken. The bushmen like their fish too
well, while the salt-water men have an organic craving for the
vegetables they cannot grow on their crowded islets.

Thirty miles from Langa Langa brought us to the passage between
Bassakanna Island and the mainland. Here, at nightfall, the wind left
us, and all night, with the whale-boat towing ahead and the crew on
board sweating at the sweeps, we strove to win through. But the tide
was against us. At midnight, midway in the passage, we came up with the
_Eugenie_, a big recruiting schooner, towing with two whale-boats. Her
skipper, Captain Keller, a sturdy young German of twenty-two, came on
board for a “gam,” and the latest news of Malaita was swapped back and
forth. He had been in luck, having gathered in twenty recruits at the
village of Fiu. While lying there, one of the customary courageous
killings had taken place. The murdered boy was what is called a
salt-water bushman—that is, a salt-water man who is half bushman and
who lives by the sea but does not live on an islet. Three bushmen came
down to this man where he was working in his garden. They behaved in
friendly fashion, and after a time suggested _kai-kai_. _Kai-kai_ means
food. He built a fire and started to boil some taro. While bending over
the pot, one of the bushmen shot him through the head. He fell into the
flames, whereupon they thrust a spear through his stomach, turned it
around, and broke it off.

“My word,” said Captain Keller, “I don’t want ever to be shot with a
Snider. Spread! You could drive a horse and carriage through that hole
in his head.”

Another recent courageous killing I heard of on Malaita was that of an
old man. A bush chief had died a natural death. Now the bushmen don’t
believe in natural deaths. No one was ever known to die a natural
death. The only way to die is by bullet, tomahawk, or spear thrust.
When a man dies in any other way, it is a clear case of having been
charmed to death. When the bush chief died naturally, his tribe placed
the guilt on a certain family. Since it did not matter which one of the
family was killed, they selected this old man who lived by himself.
This would make it easy. Furthermore, he possessed no Snider. Also, he
was blind. The old fellow got an inkling of what was coming and laid in
a large supply of arrows. Three brave warriors, each with a Snider,
came down upon him in the night time. All night they fought valiantly
with him. Whenever they moved in the bush and made a noise or a rustle,
he discharged an arrow in that direction. In the morning, when his last
arrow was gone, the three heroes crept up to him and blew his brains
out.

Morning found us still vainly toiling through the passage. At last, in
despair, we turned tail, ran out to sea, and sailed clear round
Bassakanna to our objective, Malu. The anchorage at Malu was very good,
but it lay between the shore and an ugly reef, and while easy to enter,
it was difficult to leave. The direction of the southeast trade
necessitated a beat to windward; the point of the reef was widespread
and shallow; while a current bore down at all times upon the point.

Mr. Caulfeild, the missionary at Malu, arrived in his whale-boat from a
trip down the coast. A slender, delicate man he was, enthusiastic in
his work, level-headed and practical, a true twentieth-century soldier
of the Lord. When he came down to this station on Malaita, as he said,
he agreed to come for six months. He further agreed that if he were
alive at the end of that time, he would continue on. Six years had
passed and he was still continuing on. Nevertheless he was justified in
his doubt as to living longer than six months. Three missionaries had
preceded him on Malaita, and in less than that time two had died of
fever and the third had gone home a wreck.

“What murder are you talking about?” he asked suddenly, in the midst of
a confused conversation with Captain Jansen.

Captain Jansen explained.

“Oh, that’s not the one I have reference to,” quoth Mr. Caulfeild.
“That’s old already. It happened two weeks ago.”

It was here at Malu that I atoned for all the exulting and gloating I
had been guilty of over the Solomon sore Charmian had collected at
Langa Langa. Mr. Caulfeild was indirectly responsible for my atonement.
He presented us with a chicken, which I pursued into the bush with a
rifle. My intention was to clip off its head. I succeeded, but in doing
so fell over a log and barked my shin. Result: three Solomon sores.
This made five all together that were adorning my person. Also, Captain
Jansen and Nakata had caught _gari-gari_. Literally translated,
_gari-gari_ is scratch-scratch. But translation was not necessary for
the rest of us. The skipper’s and Nakata’s gymnastics served as a
translation without words.

(No, the Solomon Islands are not as healthy as they might be. I am
writing this article on the island of Ysabel, where we have taken the
_Snark_ to careen and clean her cooper. I got over my last attack of
fever this morning, and I have had only one free day between attacks.
Charmian’s are two weeks apart. Wada is a wreck from fever. Last night
he showed all the symptoms of coming down with pneumonia. Henry, a
strapping giant of a Tahitian, just up from his last dose of fever, is
dragging around the deck like a last year’s crab-apple. Both he and
Tehei have accumulated a praiseworthy display of Solomon sores. Also,
they have caught a new form of gari-gari, a sort of vegetable poisoning
like poison oak or poison ivy. But they are not unique in this. A
number of days ago Charmian, Martin, and I went pigeon-shooting on a
small island, and we have had a foretaste of eternal torment ever
since. Also, on that small island, Martin cut the soles of his feet to
ribbons on the coral whilst chasing a shark—at least, so he says, but
from the glimpse I caught of him I thought it was the other way about.
The coral-cuts have all become Solomon sores. Before my last fever I
knocked the skin off my knuckles while heaving on a line, and I now
have three fresh sores. And poor Nakata! For three weeks he has been
unable to sit down. He sat down yesterday for the first time, and
managed to stay down for fifteen minutes. He says cheerfully that he
expects to be cured of his gari-gari in another month. Furthermore, his
gari-gari, from too enthusiastic scratch-scratching, has furnished
footholds for countless Solomon sores. Still furthermore, he has just
come down with his seventh attack of fever. If I were king, the worst
punishment I could inflict on my enemies would be to banish them to the
Solomons. On second thought, king or no king, I don’t think I’d have
the heart to do it.)

Recruiting plantation labourers on a small, narrow yacht, built for
harbour sailing, is not any too nice. The decks swarm with recruits and
their families. The main cabin is packed with them. At night they sleep
there. The only entrance to our tiny cabin is through the main cabin,
and we jam our way through them or walk over them. Nor is this nice.
One and all, they are afflicted with every form of malignant skin
disease. Some have ringworm, others have _bukua_. This latter is caused
by a vegetable parasite that invades the skin and eats it away. The
itching is intolerable. The afflicted ones scratch until the air is
filled with fine dry flakes. Then there are yaws and many other skin
ulcerations. Men come aboard with Solomon sores in their feet so large
that they can walk only on their toes, or with holes in their legs so
terrible that a fist could be thrust in to the bone. Blood-poisoning is
very frequent, and Captain Jansen, with sheath-knife and sail needle,
operates lavishly on one and all. No matter how desperate the
situation, after opening and cleansing, he claps on a poultice of
sea-biscuit soaked in water. Whenever we see a particularly horrible
case, we retire to a corner and deluge our own sores with corrosive
sublimate. And so we live and eat and sleep on the _Minota_, taking our
chance and “pretending it is good.”

At Suava, another artificial island, I had a second crow over Charmian.
A big fella marster belong Suava (which means the high chief of Suava)
came on board. But first he sent an emissary to Captain Jansen for a
fathom of calico with which to cover his royal nakedness. Meanwhile he
lingered in the canoe alongside. The regal dirt on his chest I swear
was half an inch thick, while it was a good wager that the underneath
layers were anywhere from ten to twenty years of age. He sent his
emissary on board again, who explained that the big fella marster
belong Suava was condescendingly willing enough to shake hands with
Captain Jansen and me and cadge a stick or so of trade tobacco, but
that nevertheless his high-born soul was still at so lofty an altitude
that it could not sink itself to such a depth of degradation as to
shake hands with a mere female woman. Poor Charmian! Since her Malaita
experiences she has become a changed woman. Her meekness and humbleness
are appallingly becoming, and I should not be surprised, when we return
to civilization and stroll along a sidewalk, to see her take her
station, with bowed head, a yard in the rear.

Nothing much happened at Suava. Bichu, the native cook, deserted. The
_Minota_ dragged anchor. It blew heavy squalls of wind and rain. The
mate, Mr. Jacobsen, and Wada were prostrated with fever. Our Solomon
sores increased and multiplied. And the cockroaches on board held a
combined Fourth of July and Coronation Parade. They selected midnight
for the time, and our tiny cabin for the place. They were from two to
three inches long; there were hundreds of them, and they walked all
over us. When we attempted to pursue them, they left solid footing,
rose up in the air, and fluttered about like humming-birds. They were
much larger than ours on the _Snark_. But ours are young yet, and
haven’t had a chance to grow. Also, the _Snark_ has centipedes, big
ones, six inches long. We kill them occasionally, usually in Charmian’s
bunk. I’ve been bitten twice by them, both times foully, while I was
asleep. But poor Martin had worse luck. After being sick in bed for
three weeks, the first day he sat up he sat down on one. Sometimes I
think they are the wisest who never go to Carcassonne.

Later on we returned to Malu, picked up seven recruits, hove up anchor,
and started to beat out the treacherous entrance. The wind was chopping
about, the current upon the ugly point of reef setting strong. Just as
we were on the verge of clearing it and gaining open sea, the wind
broke off four points. The _Minota_ attempted to go about, but missed
stays. Two of her anchors had been lost at Tulagi. Her one remaining
anchor was let go. Chain was let out to give it a hold on the coral.
Her fin keel struck bottom, and her main topmast lurched and shivered
as if about to come down upon our heads. She fetched up on the slack of
the anchors at the moment a big comber smashed her shoreward. The chain
parted. It was our only anchor. The _Minota_ swung around on her heel
and drove headlong into the breakers.

Bedlam reigned. All the recruits below, bushmen and afraid of the sea,
dashed panic-stricken on deck and got in everybody’s way. At the same
time the boat’s crew made a rush for the rifles. They knew what going
ashore on Malaita meant—one hand for the ship and the other hand to
fight off the natives. What they held on with I don’t know, and they
needed to hold on as the _Minota_ lifted, rolled, and pounded on the
coral. The bushmen clung in the rigging, too witless to watch out for
the topmast. The whale-boat was run out with a tow-line endeavouring in
a puny way to prevent the _Minota_ from being flung farther in toward
the reef, while Captain Jansen and the mate, the latter pallid and weak
with fever, were resurrecting a scrap-anchor from out the ballast and
rigging up a stock for it. Mr. Caulfeild, with his mission boys,
arrived in his whale-boat to help.

When the _Minota_ first struck, there was not a canoe in sight; but
like vultures circling down out of the blue, canoes began to arrive
from every quarter. The boat’s crew, with rifles at the ready, kept
them lined up a hundred feet away with a promise of death if they
ventured nearer. And there they clung, a hundred feet away, black and
ominous, crowded with men, holding their canoes with their paddles on
the perilous edge of the breaking surf. In the meantime the bushmen
were flocking down from the hills armed with spears, Sniders, arrows,
and clubs, until the beach was massed with them. To complicate matters,
at least ten of our recruits had been enlisted from the very bushmen
ashore who were waiting hungrily for the loot of the tobacco and trade
goods and all that we had on board.

The _Minota_ was honestly built, which is the first essential for any
boat that is pounding on a reef. Some idea of what she endured may be
gained from the fact that in the first twenty-four hours she parted two
anchor-chains and eight hawsers. Our boat’s crew was kept busy diving
for the anchors and bending new lines. There were times when she parted
the chains reinforced with hawsers. And yet she held together. Tree
trunks were brought from ashore and worked under her to save her keel
and bilges, but the trunks were gnawed and splintered and the ropes
that held them frayed to fragments, and still she pounded and held
together. But we were luckier than the _Ivanhoe_, a big recruiting
schooner, which had gone ashore on Malaita several months previously
and been promptly rushed by the natives. The captain and crew succeeded
in getting away in the whale-boats, and the bushmen and salt-water men
looted her clean of everything portable.

Squall after squall, driving wind and blinding rain, smote the
_Minota_, while a heavier sea was making. The _Eugenie_ lay at anchor
five miles to windward, but she was behind a point of land and could
not know of our mishap. At Captain Jansen’s suggestion, I wrote a note
to Captain Keller, asking him to bring extra anchors and gear to our
aid. But not a canoe could be persuaded to carry the letter. I offered
half a case of tobacco, but the blacks grinned and held their canoes
bow-on to the breaking seas. A half a case of tobacco was worth three
pounds. In two hours, even against the strong wind and sea, a man could
have carried the letter and received in payment what he would have
laboured half a year for on a plantation. I managed to get into a canoe
and paddle out to where Mr. Caulfeild was running an anchor with his
whale-boat. My idea was that he would have more influence over the
natives. He called the canoes up to him, and a score of them clustered
around and heard the offer of half a case of tobacco. No one spoke.

“I know what you think,” the missionary called out to them. “You think
plenty tobacco on the schooner and you’re going to get it. I tell you
plenty rifles on schooner. You no get tobacco, you get bullets.”

At last, one man, alone in a small canoe, took the letter and started.
Waiting for relief, work went on steadily on the _Minota_. Her
water-tanks were emptied, and spars, sails, and ballast started
shoreward. There were lively times on board when the _Minota_ rolled
one bilge down and then the other, a score of men leaping for life and
legs as the trade-boxes, booms, and eighty-pound pigs of iron ballast
rushed across from rail to rail and back again. The poor pretty harbour
yacht! Her decks and running rigging were a raffle. Down below
everything was disrupted. The cabin floor had been torn up to get at
the ballast, and rusty bilge-water swashed and splashed. A bushel of
limes, in a mess of flour and water, charged about like so many sticky
dumplings escaped from a half-cooked stew. In the inner cabin, Nakata
kept guard over our rifles and ammunition.

Three hours from the time our messenger started, a whale-boat, pressing
along under a huge spread of canvas, broke through the thick of a
shrieking squall to windward. It was Captain Keller, wet with rain and
spray, a revolver in belt, his boat’s crew fully armed, anchors and
hawsers heaped high amidships, coming as fast as wind could drive—the
white man, the inevitable white man, coming to a white man’s rescue.

The vulture line of canoes that had waited so long broke and
disappeared as quickly as it had formed. The corpse was not dead after
all. We now had three whale-boats, two plying steadily between the
vessel and shore, the other kept busy running out anchors, rebending
parted hawsers, and recovering the lost anchors. Later in the
afternoon, after a consultation, in which we took into consideration
that a number of our boat’s crew, as well as ten of the recruits,
belonged to this place, we disarmed the boat’s crew. This, incidently,
gave them both hands free to work for the vessel. The rifles were put
in the charge of five of Mr. Caulfeild’s mission boys. And down below
in the wreck of the cabin the missionary and his converts prayed to God
to save the _Minota_. It was an impressive scene! the unarmed man of
God praying with cloudless faith, his savage followers leaning on their
rifles and mumbling amens. The cabin walls reeled about them. The
vessel lifted and smashed upon the coral with every sea. From on deck
came the shouts of men heaving and toiling, praying, in another
fashion, with purposeful will and strength of arm.

That night Mr. Caulfeild brought off a warning. One of our recruits had
a price on his head of fifty fathoms of shell-money and forty pigs.
Baffled in their desire to capture the vessel, the bushmen decided to
get the head of the man. When killing begins, there is no telling where
it will end, so Captain Jansen armed a whale-boat and rowed in to the
edge of the beach. Ugi, one of his boat’s crew, stood up and orated for
him. Ugi was excited. Captain Jansen’s warning that any canoe sighted
that night would be pumped full of lead, Ugi turned into a bellicose
declaration of war, which wound up with a peroration somewhat to the
following effect: “You kill my captain, I drink his blood and die with
him!”

The bushmen contented themselves with burning an unoccupied mission
house, and sneaked back to the bush. The next day the _Eugenie_ sailed
in and dropped anchor. Three days and two nights the _Minota_ pounded
on the reef; but she held together, and the shell of her was pulled off
at last and anchored in smooth water. There we said good-bye to her and
all on board, and sailed away on the _Eugenie_, bound for Florida
Island. [268]




CHAPTER XVI
BÊCHE DE MER ENGLISH


Given a number of white traders, a wide area of land, and scores of
savage languages and dialects, the result will be that the traders will
manufacture a totally new, unscientific, but perfectly adequate,
language. This the traders did when they invented the Chinook lingo for
use over British Columbia, Alaska, and the Northwest Territory. So with
the lingo of the Kroo-boys of Africa, the pigeon English of the Far
East, and the bêche de mer of the westerly portion of the South Seas.
This latter is often called pigeon English, but pigeon English it
certainly is not. To show how totally different it is, mention need be
made only of the fact that the classic piecee of China has no place in
it.

There was once a sea captain who needed a dusky potentate down in his
cabin. The potentate was on deck. The captain’s command to the Chinese
steward was “Hey, boy, you go top-side catchee one piecee king.” Had
the steward been a New Hebridean or a Solomon islander, the command
would have been: “Hey, you fella boy, go look ’m eye belong you along
deck, bring ’m me fella one big fella marster belong black man.”

It was the first white men who ventured through Melanesia after the
early explorers, who developed bêche de mer English—men such as the
bêche de mer fishermen, the sandalwood traders, the pearl hunters, and
the labour recruiters. In the Solomons, for instance, scores of
languages and dialects are spoken. Unhappy the trader who tried to
learn them all; for in the next group to which he might wander he would
find scores of additional tongues. A common language was necessary—a
language so simple that a child could learn it, with a vocabulary as
limited as the intelligence of the savages upon whom it was to be used.
The traders did not reason this out. Bêche de mer English was the
product of conditions and circumstances. Function precedes organ; and
the need for a universal Melanesian lingo preceded bêche de mer
English. Bêche de mer was purely fortuitous, but it was fortuitous in
the deterministic way. Also, from the fact that out of the need the
lingo arose, bêche de mer English is a splendid argument for the
Esperanto enthusiasts.

A limited vocabulary means that each word shall be overworked. Thus,
_fella_, in bêche de mer, means all that _piecee_ does and quite a bit
more, and is used continually in every possible connection. Another
overworked word is _belong_. Nothing stands alone. Everything is
related. The thing desired is indicated by its relationship with other
things. A primitive vocabulary means primitive expression, thus, the
continuance of rain is expressed as _rain he stop_. _Sun he come up_
cannot possibly be misunderstood, while the phrase-structure itself can
be used without mental exertion in ten thousand different ways, as, for
instance, a native who desires to tell you that there are fish in the
water and who says _fish he stop_. It was while trading on Ysabel
island that I learned the excellence of this usage. I wanted two or
three pairs of the large clam-shells (measuring three feet across), but
I did not want the meat inside. Also, I wanted the meat of some of the
smaller clams to make a chowder. My instruction to the natives finally
ripened into the following “You fella bring me fella big fella
clam—kai-kai he no stop, he walk about. You fella bring me fella small
fella clam—kai-kai he stop.”

Kai-kai is the Polynesian for food, meat, eating, and to eat: but it
would be hard to say whether it was introduced into Melanesia by the
sandalwood traders or by the Polynesian westward drift. Walk about is a
quaint phrase. Thus, if one orders a Solomon sailor to put a tackle on
a boom, he will suggest, “That fella boom he walk about too much.” And
if the said sailor asks for shore liberty, he will state that it is his
desire to walk about. Or if said sailor be seasick, he will explain his
condition by stating, “Belly belong me walk about too much.”

Too much, by the way, does not indicate anything excessive. It is
merely the simple superlative. Thus, if a native is asked the distance
to a certain village, his answer will be one of these four: “Close-up”;
“long way little bit”; “long way big bit”; or “long way too much.” Long
way too much does not mean that one cannot walk to the village; it
means that he will have to walk farther than if the village were a long
way big bit.

_Gammon_ is to lie, to exaggerate, to joke. _Mary_ is a woman. Any
woman is a Mary. All women are Marys. Doubtlessly the first dim white
adventurer whimsically called a native woman Mary, and of similar birth
must have been many other words in bêche de mer. The white men were all
seamen, and so capsize and sing out were introduced into the lingo. One
would not tell a Melanesian cook to empty the dish-water, but he would
tell him to capsize it. To sing out is to cry loudly, to call out, or
merely to speak. Sing-sing is a song. The native Christian does not
think of God calling for Adam in the Garden of Eden; in the native’s
mind, God sings out for Adam.

Savvee or catchee are practically the only words which have been
introduced straight from pigeon English. Of course, pickaninny has
happened along, but some of its uses are delicious. Having bought a
fowl from a native in a canoe, the native asked me if I wanted
“Pickaninny stop along him fella.” It was not until he showed me a
handful of hen’s eggs that I understood his meaning. My word, as an
exclamation with a thousand significances, could have arrived from
nowhere else than Old England. A paddle, a sweep, or an oar, is called
washee, and washee is also the verb.

Here is a letter, dictated by one Peter, a native trader at Santa Anna,
and addressed to his employer. Harry, the schooner captain, started to
write the letter, but was stopped by Peter at the end of the second
sentence. Thereafter the letter runs in Peter’s own words, for Peter
was afraid that Harry gammoned too much, and he wanted the straight
story of his needs to go to headquarters.
“Santa Anna

“Trader Peter has worked 12 months for your firm and has not received
any pay yet. He hereby wants £12.” (At this point Peter began
dictation). “Harry he gammon along him all the time too much. I like
him 6 tin biscuit, 4 bag rice, 24 tin bullamacow. Me like him 2 rifle,
me savvee look out along boat, some place me go man he no good, he
_kai-kai_ along me.
“Peter.”

_Bullamacow_ means tinned beef. This word was corrupted from the
English language by the Samoans, and from them learned by the traders,
who carried it along with them into Melanesia. Captain Cook and the
other early navigators made a practice of introducing seeds, plants,
and domestic animals amongst the natives. It was at Samoa that one such
navigator landed a bull and a cow. “This is a bull and cow,” said he to
the Samoans. They thought he was giving the name of the breed, and from
that day to this, beef on the hoof and beef in the tin is called
_bullamacow_.

A Solomon islander cannot say _fence_, so, in bêche de mer, it becomes
_fennis_; store is _sittore_, and box is _bokkis_. Just now the fashion
in chests, which are known as boxes, is to have a bell-arrangement on
the lock so that the box cannot be opened without sounding an alarm. A
box so equipped is not spoken of as a mere box, but as the _bokkis
belong bell_.

_Fright_ is the bêche de mer for fear. If a native appears timid and
one asks him the cause, he is liable to hear in reply: “Me fright along
you too much.” Or the native may be _fright_ along storm, or wild bush,
or haunted places. _Cross_ covers every form of anger. A man may be
cross at one when he is feeling only petulant; or he may be cross when
he is seeking to chop off your head and make a stew out of you. A
recruit, after having toiled three years on a plantation, was returned
to his own village on Malaita. He was clad in all kinds of gay and
sportive garments. On his head was a top-hat. He possessed a trade-box
full of calico, beads, porpoise-teeth, and tobacco. Hardly was the
anchor down, when the villagers were on board. The recruit looked
anxiously for his own relatives, but none was to be seen. One of the
natives took the pipe out of his mouth. Another confiscated the strings
of beads from around his neck. A third relieved him of his gaudy
loin-cloth, and a fourth tried on the top-hat and omitted to return it.
Finally, one of them took his trade-box, which represented three years’
toil, and dropped it into a canoe alongside. “That fella belong you?”
the captain asked the recruit, referring to the thief. “No belong me,”
was the answer. “Then why in Jericho do you let him take the box?” the
captain demanded indignantly. Quoth the recruit, “Me speak along him,
say bokkis he stop, that fella he cross along me”—which was the
recruit’s way of saying that the other man would murder him. God’s
wrath, when He sent the Flood, was merely a case of being cross along
mankind.

What name? is the great interrogation of bêche de mer. It all depends
on how it is uttered. It may mean: What is your business? What do you
mean by this outrageous conduct? What do you want? What is the thing
you are after? You had best watch out; I demand an explanation; and a
few hundred other things. Call a native out of his house in the middle
of the night, and he is likely to demand, “What name you sing out along
me?”

Imagine the predicament of the Germans on the plantations of
Bougainville Island, who are compelled to learn bêche de mer English in
order to handle the native labourers. It is to them an unscientific
polyglot, and there are no text-books by which to study it. It is a
source of unholy delight to the other white planters and traders to
hear the German wrestling stolidly with the circumlocutions and
short-cuts of a language that has no grammar and no dictionary.

Some years ago large numbers of Solomon islanders were recruited to
labour on the sugar plantations of Queensland. A missionary urged one
of the labourers, who was a convert, to get up and preach a sermon to a
shipload of Solomon islanders who had just arrived. He chose for his
subject the Fall of Man, and the address he gave became a classic in
all Australasia. It proceeded somewhat in the following manner:

“Altogether you boy belong Solomons you no savvee white man. Me fella
me savvee him. Me fella me savvee talk along white man.

“Before long time altogether no place he stop. God big fella marster
belong white man, him fella He make ’m altogether. God big fella
marster belong white man, He make ’m big fella garden. He good fella
too much. Along garden plenty yam he stop, plenty cocoanut, plenty
taro, plenty _kumara_ (sweet potatoes), altogether good fella kai-kai
too much.

“Bimeby God big fella marster belong white man He make ’m one fella man
and put ’m along garden belong Him. He call ’m this fella man Adam. He
name belong him. He put him this fella man Adam along garden, and He
speak, ‘This fella garden he belong you.’ And He look ’m this fella
Adam he walk about too much. Him fella Adam all the same sick; he no
savvee kai-kai; he walk about all the time. And God He no savvee. God
big fella marster belong white man, He scratch ’m head belong Him. God
say: ‘What name? Me no savvee what name this fella Adam he want.’

“Bimeby God He scratch ’m head belong Him too much, and speak: ‘Me
fella me savvee, him fella Adam him want ’m Mary.’ So He make Adam he
go asleep, He take one fella bone belong him, and He make ’m one fella
Mary along bone. He call him this fella Mary, Eve. He give ’m this
fella Eve along Adam, and He speak along him fella Adam: ‘Close up
altogether along this fella garden belong you two fella. One fella tree
he tambo (taboo) along you altogether. This fella tree belong apple.’

“So Adam Eve two fella stop along garden, and they two fella have ’m
good time too much. Bimeby, one day, Eve she come along Adam, and she
speak, ‘More good you me two fella we eat ’m this fella apple.’ Adam he
speak, ‘No,’ and Eve she speak, ‘What name you no like ’m me?’ And Adam
he speak, ‘Me like ’m you too much, but me fright along God.’ And Eve
she speak, ‘Gammon! What name? God He no savvee look along us two fella
all ’m time. God big fella marster, He gammon along you.’ But Adam he
speak, ‘No.’ But Eve she talk, talk, talk, allee time—allee same Mary
she talk along boy along Queensland and make ’m trouble along boy. And
bimeby Adam he tired too much, and he speak, ‘All right.’ So these two
fella they go eat ’m. When they finish eat ’m, my word, they fright
like hell, and they go hide along scrub.

“And God He come walk about along garden, and He sing out, ‘Adam!’ Adam
he no speak. He too much fright. My word! And God He sing out, ‘Adam!’
And Adam he speak, ‘You call ’m me?’ God He speak, ‘Me call ’m you too
much.’ Adam he speak, ‘Me sleep strong fella too much.’ And God He
speak, ‘You been eat ’m this fella apple.’ Adam he speak, ‘No, me no
been eat ’m.’ God He speak. ‘What name you gammon along me? You been
eat ’m.’ And Adam he speak, ‘Yes, me been eat ’m.’

“And God big fella marster He cross along Adam Eve two fella too much,
and He speak, ‘You two fella finish along me altogether. You go catch
’m bokkis (box) belong you, and get to hell along scrub.’

“So Adam Eve these two fella go along scrub. And God He make ’m one big
fennis (fence) all around garden and He put ’m one fella marster belong
God along fennis. And He give this fella marster belong God one big
fella musket, and He speak, ‘S’pose you look ’m these two fella Adam
Eve, you shoot ’m plenty too much.’”




CHAPTER XVII
THE AMATEUR M.D.


When we sailed from San Francisco on the _Snark_ I knew as much about
sickness as the Admiral of the Swiss Navy knows about salt water. And
here, at the start, let me advise any one who meditates going to
out-of-the-way tropic places. Go to a first-class druggist—the sort
that have specialists on their salary list who know everything. Talk
the matter over with such an one. Note carefully all that he says. Have
a list made of all that he recommends. Write out a cheque for the total
cost, and tear it up.

I wish I had done the same. I should have been far wiser, I know now,
if I had bought one of those ready-made, self-acting, fool-proof
medicine chests such as are favoured by fourth-rate ship-masters. In
such a chest each bottle has a number. On the inside of the lid is
placed a simple table of directions: No. 1, toothache; No. 2, smallpox;
No. 3, stomachache; No. 4, cholera; No. 5, rheumatism; and so on,
through the list of human ills. And I might have used it as did a
certain venerable skipper, who, when No. 3 was empty, mixed a dose from
No. 1 and No. 2, or, when No. 7 was all gone, dosed his crew with 4 and
3 till 3 gave out, when he used 5 and 2.

So far, with the exception of corrosive sublimate (which was
recommended as an antiseptic in surgical operations, and which I have
not yet used for that purpose), my medicine-chest has been useless. It
has been worse than useless, for it has occupied much space which I
could have used to advantage.

With my surgical instruments it is different. While I have not yet had
serious use for them, I do not regret the space they occupy. The
thought of them makes me feel good. They are so much life insurance,
only, fairer than that last grim game, one is not supposed to die in
order to win. Of course, I don’t know how to use them, and what I don’t
know about surgery would set up a dozen quacks in prosperous practice.
But needs must when the devil drives, and we of the _Snark_ have no
warning when the devil may take it into his head to drive, ay, even a
thousand miles from land and twenty days from the nearest port.

I did not know anything about dentistry, but a friend fitted me out
with forceps and similar weapons, and in Honolulu I picked up a book
upon teeth. Also, in that sub-tropical city I managed to get hold of a
skull, from which I extracted the teeth swiftly and painlessly. Thus
equipped, I was ready, though not exactly eager, to tackle any tooth
that get in my way. It was in Nuku-hiva, in the Marquesas, that my
first case presented itself in the shape of a little, old Chinese. The
first thing I did was to got the buck fever, and I leave it to any
fair-minded person if buck fever, with its attendant heart-palpitations
and arm-tremblings, is the right condition for a man to be in who is
endeavouring to pose as an old hand at the business. I did not fool the
aged Chinaman. He was as frightened as I and a bit more shaky. I almost
forgot to be frightened in the fear that he would bolt. I swear, if he
had tried to, that I would have tripped him up and sat on him until
calmness and reason returned.

I wanted that tooth. Also, Martin wanted a snap-shot of me getting it.
Likewise Charmian got her camera. Then the procession started. We were
stopping at what had been the club-house when Stevenson was in the
Marquesas on the Casco. On the veranda, where he had passed so many
pleasant hours, the light was not good—for snapshots, I mean. I led on
into the garden, a chair in one hand, the other hand filled with
forceps of various sorts, my knees knocking together disgracefully. The
poor old Chinaman came second, and he was shaking, too. Charmian and
Martin brought up the rear, armed with kodaks. We dived under the
avocado trees, threaded our way through the cocoanut palms, and came on
a spot that satisfied Martin’s photographic eye.

I looked at the tooth, and then discovered that I could not remember
anything about the teeth I had pulled from the skull five months
previously. Did it have one prong? two prongs? or three prongs? What
was left of the part that showed appeared very crumbly, and I knew that
I should have taken hold of the tooth deep down in the gum. It was very
necessary that I should know how many prongs that tooth had. Back to
the house I went for the book on teeth. The poor old victim looked like
photographs I had seen of fellow-countrymen of his, criminals, on their
knees, waiting the stroke of the beheading sword.

“Don’t let him get away,” I cautioned to Martin. “I want that tooth.”

“I sure won’t,” he replied with enthusiasm, from behind his camera. “I
want that photograph.”

For the first time I felt sorry for the Chinaman. Though the book did
not tell me anything about pulling teeth, it was all right, for on one
page I found drawings of all the teeth, including their prongs and how
they were set in the jaw. Then came the pursuit of the forceps. I had
seven pairs, but was in doubt as to which pair I should use. I did not
want any mistake. As I turned the hardware over with rattle and clang,
the poor victim began to lose his grip and to turn a greenish yellow
around the gills. He complained about the sun, but that was necessary
for the photograph, and he had to stand it. I fitted the forceps around
the tooth, and the patient shivered and began to wilt.

“Ready?” I called to Martin.

“All ready,” he answered.

I gave a pull. Ye gods! The tooth was loose! Out it came on the
instant. I was jubilant as I held it aloft in the forceps.

“Put it back, please, oh, put it back,” Martin pleaded. “You were too
quick for me.”

And the poor old Chinaman sat there while I put the tooth back and
pulled over. Martin snapped the camera. The deed was done. Elation?
Pride? No hunter was ever prouder of his first pronged buck than I was
of that three-pronged tooth. I did it! I did it! With my own hands and
a pair of forceps I did it, to say nothing of the forgotten memories of
the dead man’s skull.

My next case was a Tahitian sailor. He was a small man, in a state of
collapse from long days and nights of jumping toothache. I lanced the
gums first. I didn’t know how to lance them, but I lanced them just the
same. It was a long pull and a strong pull. The man was a hero. He
groaned and moaned, and I thought he was going to faint. But he kept
his mouth open and let me pull. And then it came.

After that I was ready to meet all comers—just the proper state of mind
for a Waterloo. And it came. Its name was Tomi. He was a strapping
giant of a heathen with a bad reputation. He was addicted to deeds of
violence. Among other things he had beaten two of his wives to death
with his fists. His father and mother had been naked cannibals. When he
sat down and I put the forceps into his mouth, he was nearly as tall as
I was standing up. Big men, prone to violence, very often have a streak
of fat in their make-up, so I was doubtful of him. Charmian grabbed one
arm and Warren grabbed the other. Then the tug of war began. The
instant the forceps closed down on the tooth, his jaws closed down on
the forceps. Also, both his hands flew up and gripped my pulling hand.
I held on, and he held on. Charmian and Warren held on. We wrestled all
about the shop.

It was three against one, and my hold on an aching tooth was certainly
a foul one; but in spite of the handicap he got away with us. The
forceps slipped off, banging and grinding along against his upper teeth
with a nerve-scraping sound. Out of his month flew the forceps, and he
rose up in the air with a blood-curdling yell. The three of us fell
back. We expected to be massacred. But that howling savage of
sanguinary reputation sank back in the chair. He held his head in both
his hands, and groaned and groaned and groaned. Nor would he listen to
reason. I was a quack. My painless tooth-extraction was a delusion and
a snare and a low advertising dodge. I was so anxious to get that tooth
that I was almost ready to bribe him. But that went against my
professional pride and I let him depart with the tooth still intact,
the only case on record up to date of failure on my part when once I
had got a grip. Since then I have never let a tooth go by me. Only the
other day I volunteered to beat up three days to windward to pull a
woman missionary’s tooth. I expect, before the voyage of the _Snark_ is
finished, to be doing bridge work and putting on gold crowns.

I don’t know whether they are yaws or not—a physician in Fiji told me
they were, and a missionary in the Solomons told me they were not; but
at any rate I can vouch for the fact that they are most uncomfortable.
It was my luck to ship in Tahiti a French-sailor, who, when we got to
sea, proved to be afflicted with a vile skin disease. The _Snark_ was
too small and too much of a family party to permit retaining him on
board; but perforce, until we could reach land and discharge him, it
was up to me to doctor him. I read up the books and proceeded to treat
him, taking care afterwards always to use a thorough antiseptic wash.
When we reached Tutuila, far from getting rid of him, the port doctor
declared a quarantine against him and refused to allow him ashore. But
at Apia, Samoa, I managed to ship him off on a steamer to New Zealand.
Here at Apia my ankles were badly bitten by mosquitoes, and I confess
to having scratched the bites—as I had a thousand times before. By the
time I reached the island of Savaii, a small sore had developed on the
hollow of my instep. I thought it was due to chafe and to acid fumes
from the hot lava over which I tramped. An application of salve would
cure it—so I thought. The salve did heal it over, whereupon an
astonishing inflammation set in, the new skin came off, and a larger
sore was exposed. This was repeated many times. Each time new skin
formed, an inflammation followed, and the circumference of the sore
increased. I was puzzled and frightened. All my life my skin had been
famous for its healing powers, yet here was something that would not
heal. Instead, it was daily eating up more skin, while it had eaten
down clear through the skin and was eating up the muscle itself.

By this time the _Snark_ was at sea on her way to Fiji. I remembered
the French sailor, and for the first time became seriously alarmed.
Four other similar sores had appeared—or ulcers, rather, and the pain
of them kept me awake at night. All my plans were made to lay up the
_Snark_ in Fiji and get away on the first steamer to Australia and
professional M.D.’s. In the meantime, in my amateur M.D. way, I did my
best. I read through all the medical works on board. Not a line nor a
word could I find descriptive of my affliction. I brought common
horse-sense to bear on the problem. Here were malignant and excessively
active ulcers that were eating me up. There was an organic and
corroding poison at work. Two things I concluded must be done. First,
some agent must be found to destroy the poison. Secondly, the ulcers
could not possibly heal from the outside in; they must heal from the
inside out. I decided to fight the poison with corrosive sublimate. The
very name of it struck me as vicious. Talk of fighting fire with fire!
I was being consumed by a corrosive poison, and it appealed to my fancy
to fight it with another corrosive poison. After several days I
alternated dressings of corrosive sublimate with dressings of peroxide
of hydrogen. And behold, by the time we reached Fiji four of the five
ulcers were healed, while the remaining one was no bigger than a pea.

I now felt fully qualified to treat yaws. Likewise I had a wholesome
respect for them. Not so the rest of the crew of the _Snark_. In their
case, seeing was not believing. One and all, they had seen my dreadful
predicament; and all of them, I am convinced, had a subconscious
certitude that their own superb constitutions and glorious
personalities would never allow lodgment of so vile a poison in their
carcasses as my anæmic constitution and mediocre personality had
allowed to lodge in mine. At Port Resolution, in the New Hebrides,
Martin elected to walk barefooted in the bush and returned on board
with many cuts and abrasions, especially on his shins.

“You’d better be careful,” I warned him. “I’ll mix up some corrosive
sublimate for you to wash those cuts with. An ounce of prevention, you
know.”

But Martin smiled a superior smile. Though he did not say so, I
nevertheless was given to understand that he was not as other men (I
was the only man he could possibly have had reference to), and that in
a couple of days his cuts would be healed. He also read me a
dissertation upon the peculiar purity of his blood and his remarkable
healing powers. I felt quite humble when he was done with me. Evidently
I was different from other men in so far as purity of blood was
concerned.

Nakata, the cabin-boy, while ironing one day, mistook the calf of his
leg for the ironing-block and accumulated a burn three inches in length
and half an inch wide. He, too, smiled the superior smile when I
offered him corrosive sublimate and reminded him of my own cruel
experience. I was given to understand, with all due suavity and
courtesy, that no matter what was the matter with my blood, his
number-one, Japanese, Port-Arthur blood was all right and scornful of
the festive microbe.

Wada, the cook, took part in a disastrous landing of the launch, when
he had to leap overboard and fend the launch off the beach in a
smashing surf. By means of shells and coral he cut his legs and feet up
beautifully. I offered him the corrosive sublimate bottle. Once again I
suffered the superior smile and was given to understand that his blood
was the same blood that had licked Russia and was going to lick the
United States some day, and that if his blood wasn’t able to cure a few
trifling cuts, he’d commit hari-kari in sheer disgrace.

From all of which I concluded that an amateur M.D. is without honour on
his own vessel, even if he has cured himself. The rest of the crew had
begun to look upon me as a sort of mild mono-maniac on the question of
sores and sublimate. Just because my blood was impure was no reason
that I should think everybody else’s was. I made no more overtures.
Time and microbes were with me, and all I had to do was wait.

“I think there’s some dirt in these cuts,” Martin said tentatively,
after several days. “I’ll wash them out and then they’ll be all right,”
he added, after I had refused to rise to the bait.

Two more days passed, but the cuts did not pass, and I caught Martin
soaking his feet and legs in a pail of hot water.

“Nothing like hot water,” he proclaimed enthusiastically. “It beats all
the dope the doctors ever put up. These sores will be all right in the
morning.”

But in the morning he wore a troubled look, and I knew that the hour of
my triumph approached.

“I think I _will_ try some of that medicine,” he announced later on in
the day. “Not that I think it’ll do much good,” he qualified, “but I’ll
just give it a try anyway.”

Next came the proud blood of Japan to beg medicine for its illustrious
sores, while I heaped coals of fire on all their houses by explaining
in minute and sympathetic detail the treatment that should be given.
Nakata followed instructions implicitly, and day by day his sores grew
smaller. Wada was apathetic, and cured less readily. But Martin still
doubted, and because he did not cure immediately, he developed the
theory that while doctor’s dope was all right, it did not follow that
the same kind of dope was efficacious with everybody. As for himself,
corrosive sublimate had no effect. Besides, how did I know that it was
the right stuff? I had had no experience. Just because I happened to
get well while using it was not proof that it had played any part in
the cure. There were such things as coincidences. Without doubt there
was a dope that would cure the sores, and when he ran across a real
doctor he would find what that dope was and get some of it.

About this time we arrived in the Solomon Islands. No physician would
ever recommend the group for invalids or sanitoriums. I spent but
little time there ere I really and for the first time in my life
comprehended how frail and unstable is human tissue. Our first
anchorage was Port Mary, on the island of Santa Anna. The one lone
white man, a trader, came alongside. Tom Butler was his name, and he
was a beautiful example of what the Solomons can do to a strong man. He
lay in his whale-boat with the helplessness of a dying man. No smile
and little intelligence illumined his face. He was a sombre
death’s-head, too far gone to grin. He, too, had yaws, big ones. We
were compelled to drag him over the rail of the _Snark_. He said that
his health was good, that he had not had the fever for some time, and
that with the exception of his arm he was all right and trim. His arm
appeared to be paralysed. Paralysis he rejected with scorn. He had had
it before, and recovered. It was a common native disease on Santa Anna,
he said, as he was helped down the companion ladder, his dead arm
dropping, bump-bump, from step to step. He was certainly the ghastliest
guest we ever entertained, and we’ve had not a few lepers and
elephantiasis victims on board.

Martin inquired about yaws, for here was a man who ought to know. He
certainly did know, if we could judge by his scarred arms and legs and
by the live ulcers that corroded in the midst of the scars. Oh, one got
used to yaws, quoth Tom Butler. They were never really serious until
they had eaten deep into the flesh. Then they attacked the walls of the
arteries, the arteries burst, and there was a funeral. Several of the
natives had recently died that way ashore. But what did it matter? If
it wasn’t yaws, it was something else in the Solomons.

I noticed that from this moment Martin displayed a swiftly increasing
interest in his own yaws. Dosings with corrosive sublimate were more
frequent, while, in conversation, he began to revert with growing
enthusiasm to the clean climate of Kansas and all other things Kansan.
Charmian and I thought that California was a little bit of all right.
Henry swore by Rapa, and Tehei staked all on Bora Bora for his own
blood’s sake; while Wada and Nakata sang the sanitary pæan of Japan.

One evening, as the _Snark_ worked around the southern end of the
island of Ugi, looking for a reputed anchorage, a Church of England
missionary, a Mr. Drew, bound in his whaleboat for the coast of San
Cristoval, came alongside and stopped for dinner. Martin, his legs
swathed in Red Cross bandages till they looked like a mummy’s, turned
the conversation upon yaws. Yes, said Mr. Drew, they were quite common
in the Solomons. All white men caught them.

“And have you had them?” Martin demanded, in the soul of him quite
shocked that a Church of England missionary could possess so vulgar an
affliction.

Mr. Drew nodded his head and added that not only had he had them, but
at that moment he was doctoring several.

“What do you use on them?” Martin asked like a flash.

My heart almost stood still waiting the answer. By that answer my
professional medical prestige stood or fell. Martin, I could see, was
quite sure it was going to fall. And then the answer—O blessed answer!

“Corrosive sublimate,” said Mr. Drew.

Martin gave in handsomely, I’ll admit, and I am confident that at that
moment, if I had asked permission to pull one of his teeth, he would
not have denied me.

All white men in the Solomons catch yaws, and every cut or abrasion
practically means another yaw. Every man I met had had them, and nine
out of ten had active ones. There was but one exception, a young fellow
who had been in the islands five months, who had come down with fever
ten days after he arrived, and who had since then been down so often
with fever that he had had neither time nor opportunity for yaws.

Every one on the _Snark_ except Charmian came down with yaws. Hers was
the same egotism that Japan and Kansas had displayed. She ascribed her
immunity to the pureness of her blood, and as the days went by she
ascribed it more often and more loudly to the pureness of her blood.
Privately I ascribed her immunity to the fact that, being a woman, she
escaped most of the cuts and abrasions to which we hard-working men
were subject in the course of working the _Snark_ around the world. I
did not tell her so. You see, I did not wish to bruise her ego with
brutal facts. Being an M.D., if only an amateur one, I knew more about
the disease than she, and I knew that time was my ally. But alas, I
abused my ally when it dealt a charming little yaw on the shin. So
quickly did I apply antiseptic treatment, that the yaw was cured before
she was convinced that she had one. Again, as an M.D., I was without
honour on my own vessel; and, worse than that, I was charged with
having tried to mislead her into the belief that she had had a yaw. The
pureness of her blood was more rampant than ever, and I poked my nose
into my navigation books and kept quiet. And then came the day. We were
cruising along the coast of Malaita at the time.

“What’s that abaft your ankle-bone?” said I.

“Nothing,” said she.

“All right,” said I; “but put some corrosive sublimate on it just the
same. And some two or three weeks from now, when it is well and you
have a scar that you will carry to your grave, just forget about the
purity of your blood and your ancestral history and tell me what you
think about yaws anyway.”

It was as large as a silver dollar, that yaw, and it took all of three
weeks to heal. There were times when Charmian could not walk because of
the hurt of it; and there were times upon times when she explained that
abaft the ankle-bone was the most painful place to have a yaw. I
explained, in turn, that, never having experienced a yaw in that
locality, I was driven to conclude the hollow of the instep was the
most painful place for yaw-culture. We left it to Martin, who disagreed
with both of us and proclaimed passionately that the only truly painful
place was the shin. No wonder horse-racing is so popular.

But yaws lose their novelty after a time. At the present moment of
writing I have five yaws on my hands and three more on my shin.
Charmian has one on each side of her right instep. Tehei is frantic
with his. Martin’s latest shin-cultures have eclipsed his earlier ones.
And Nakata has several score casually eating away at his tissue. But
the history of the _Snark_ in the Solomons has been the history of
every ship since the early discoverers. From the “Sailing Directions” I
quote the following:

“The crews of vessels remaining any considerable time in the Solomons
find wounds and sores liable to change into malignant ulcers.”

Nor on the question of fever were the “Sailing Directions” any more
encouraging, for in them I read:

“New arrivals are almost certain sooner or later to suffer from fever.
The natives are also subject to it. The number of deaths among the
whites in the year 1897 amounted to 9 among a population of 50.”

Some of these deaths, however, were accidental.

Nakata was the first to come down with fever. This occurred at
Penduffryn. Wada and Henry followed him. Charmian surrendered next. I
managed to escape for a couple of months; but when I was bowled over,
Martin sympathetically joined me several days later. Out of the seven
of us all told Tehei is the only one who has escaped; but his
sufferings from nostalgia are worse than fever. Nakata, as usual,
followed instructions faithfully, so that by the end of his third
attack he could take a two hours’ sweat, consume thirty or forty grains
of quinine, and be weak but all right at the end of twenty-four hours.

Wada and Henry, however, were tougher patients with which to deal. In
the first place, Wada got in a bad funk. He was of the firm conviction
that his star had set and that the Solomons would receive his bones. He
saw that life about him was cheap. At Penduffryn he saw the ravages of
dysentery, and, unfortunately for him, he saw one victim carried out on
a strip of galvanized sheet-iron and dumped without coffin or funeral
into a hole in the ground. Everybody had fever, everybody had
dysentery, everybody had everything. Death was common. Here to-day and
gone to-morrow—and Wada forgot all about to-day and made up his mind
that to-morrow had come.

He was careless of his ulcers, neglected to sublimate them, and by
uncontrolled scratching spread them all over his body. Nor would he
follow instructions with fever, and, as a result, would be down five
days at a time, when a day would have been sufficient. Henry, who is a
strapping giant of a man, was just as bad. He refused point blank to
take quinine, on the ground that years before he had had fever and that
the pills the doctor gave him were of different size and colour from
the quinine tablets I offered him. So Henry joined Wada.

But I fooled the pair of them, and dosed them with their own medicine,
which was faith-cure. They had faith in their funk that they were going
to die. I slammed a lot of quinine down their throats and took their
temperature. It was the first time I had used my medicine-chest
thermometer, and I quickly discovered that it was worthless, that it
had been produced for profit and not for service. If I had let on to my
two patients that the thermometer did not work, there would have been
two funerals in short order. Their temperature I swear was 105°. I
solemnly made one and then the other smoke the thermometer, allowed an
expression of satisfaction to irradiate my countenance, and joyfully
told them that their temperature was 94°. Then I slammed more quinine
down their throats, told them that any sickness or weakness they might
experience would be due to the quinine, and left them to get well. And
they did get well, Wada in spite of himself. If a man can die through a
misapprehension, is there any immorality in making him live through a
misapprehension?

Commend me the white race when it comes to grit and surviving. One of
our two Japanese and both our Tahitians funked and had to be slapped on
the back and cheered up and dragged along by main strength toward life.
Charmian and Martin took their afflictions cheerfully, made the least
of them, and moved with calm certitude along the way of life. When Wada
and Henry were convinced that they were going to die, the funeral
atmosphere was too much for Tehei, who prayed dolorously and cried for
hours at a time. Martin, on the other hand, cursed and got well, and
Charmian groaned and made plans for what she was going to do when she
got well again.

Charmian had been raised a vegetarian and a sanitarian. Her Aunt Netta,
who brought her up and who lived in a healthful climate, did not
believe in drugs. Neither did Charmian. Besides, drugs disagreed with
her. Their effects were worse than the ills they were supposed to
alleviate. But she listened to the argument in favour of quinine,
accepted it as the lesser evil, and in consequence had shorter, less
painful, and less frequent attacks of fever. We encountered a Mr.
Caulfeild, a missionary, whose two predecessors had died after less
than six months’ residence in the Solomons. Like them he had been a
firm believer in homeopathy, until after his first fever, whereupon,
unlike them, he made a grand slide back to allopathy and quinine,
catching fever and carrying on his Gospel work.

But poor Wada! The straw that broke the cook’s back was when Charmian
and I took him along on a cruise to the cannibal island of Malaita, in
a small yacht, on the deck of which the captain had been murdered half
a year before. _Kai-kai_ means to eat, and Wada was sure he was going
to be _kai-kai’d_. We went about heavily armed, our vigilance was
unremitting, and when we went for a bath in the mouth of a fresh-water
stream, black boys, armed with rifles, did sentry duty about us. We
encountered English war vessels burning and shelling villages in
punishment for murders. Natives with prices on their heads sought
shelter on board of us. Murder stalked abroad in the land. In
out-of-the-way places we received warnings from friendly savages of
impending attacks. Our vessel owed two heads to Malaita, which were
liable to be collected any time. Then to cap it all, we were wrecked on
a reef, and with rifles in one hand warned the canoes of wreckers off
while with the other hand we toiled to save the ship. All of which was
too much for Wada, who went daffy, and who finally quitted the _Snark_
on the island of Ysabel, going ashore for good in a driving rain-storm,
between two attacks of fever, while threatened with pneumonia. If he
escapes being _kai-kai’d_, and if he can survive sores and fever which
are riotous ashore, he can expect, if he is reasonably lucky, to get
away from that place to the adjacent island in anywhere from six to
eight weeks. He never did think much of my medicine, despite the fact
that I successfully and at the first trial pulled two aching teeth for
him.

The _Snark_ has been a hospital for months, and I confess that we are
getting used to it. At Meringe Lagoon, where we careened and cleaned
the _Snark’s_ copper, there were times when only one man of us was able
to go into the water, while the three white men on the plantation
ashore were all down with fever. At the moment of writing this we are
lost at sea somewhere northeast of Ysabel and trying vainly to find
Lord Howe Island, which is an atoll that cannot be sighted unless one
is on top of it. The chronometer has gone wrong. The sun does not shine
anyway, nor can I get a star observation at night, and we have had
nothing but squalls and rain for days and days. The cook is gone.
Nakata, who has been trying to be both cook and cabin boy, is down on
his back with fever. Martin is just up from fever, and going down
again. Charmian, whose fever has become periodical, is looking up in
her date book to find when the next attack will be. Henry has begun to
eat quinine in an expectant mood. And, since my attacks hit me with the
suddenness of bludgeon-blows I do not know from moment to moment when I
shall be brought down. By a mistake we gave our last flour away to some
white men who did not have any flour. We don’t know when we’ll make
land. Our Solomon sores are worse than ever, and more numerous. The
corrosive sublimate was accidentally left ashore at Penduffryn; the
peroxide of hydrogen is exhausted; and I am experimenting with boracic
acid, lysol, and antiphlogystine. At any rate, if I fail in becoming a
reputable M.D., it won’t be from lack of practice.

P.S. It is now two weeks since the foregoing was written, and Tehei,
the only immune on board has been down ten days with far severer fever
than any of us and is still down. His temperature has been repeatedly
as high as 104, and his pulse 115.

P.S. At sea, between Tasman atoll and Manning Straits. Tehei’s attack
developed into black water fever—the severest form of malarial fever,
which, the doctor-book assures me, is due to some outside infection as
well. Having pulled him through his fever, I am now at my wit’s end,
for he has lost his wits altogether. I am rather recent in practice to
take up the cure of insanity. This makes the second lunacy case on this
short voyage.

P.S. Some day I shall write a book (for the profession), and entitle
it, “Around the World on the Hospital Ship _Snark_.” Even our pets have
not escaped. We sailed from Meringe Lagoon with two, an Irish terrier
and a white cockatoo. The terrier fell down the cabin companionway and
lamed its nigh hind leg, then repeated the manœuvre and lamed its off
fore leg. At the present moment it has but two legs to walk on.
Fortunately, they are on opposite sides and ends, so that she can still
dot and carry two. The cockatoo was crushed under the cabin skylight
and had to be killed. This was our first funeral—though for that
matter, the several chickens we had, and which would have made welcome
broth for the convalescents, flew overboard and were drowned. Only the
cockroaches flourish. Neither illness nor accident ever befalls them,
and they grow larger and more carnivorous day by day, gnawing our
finger-nails and toe-nails while we sleep.

P.S. Charmian is having another bout with fever. Martin, in despair,
has taken to horse-doctoring his yaws with bluestone and to blessing
the Solomons. As for me, in addition to navigating, doctoring, and
writing short stories, I am far from well. With the exception of the
insanity cases, I’m the worst off on board. I shall catch the next
steamer to Australia and go on the operating table. Among my minor
afflictions, I may mention a new and mysterious one. For the past week
my hands have been swelling as with dropsy. It is only by a painful
effort that I can close them. A pull on a rope is excruciating. The
sensations are like those that accompany severe chilblains. Also, the
skin is peeling off both hands at an alarming rate, besides which the
new skin underneath is growing hard and thick. The doctor-book fails to
mention this disease. Nobody knows what it is.

P.S. Well, anyway, I’ve cured the chronometer. After knocking about the
sea for eight squally, rainy days, most of the time hove to, I
succeeded in catching a partial observation of the sun at midday. From
this I worked up my latitude, then headed by log to the latitude of
Lord Howe, and ran both that latitude and the island down together.
Here I tested the chronometer by longitude sights and found it
something like three minutes out. Since each minute is equivalent to
fifteen miles, the total error can be appreciated. By repeated
observations at Lord Howe I rated the chronometer, finding it to have a
daily losing error of seven-tenths of a second. Now it happens that a
year ago, when we sailed from Hawaii, that selfsame chronometer had
that selfsame losing error of seven-tenths of a second. Since that
error was faithfully added every day, and since that error, as proved
by my observations at Lord Howe, has not changed, then what under the
sun made that chronometer all of a sudden accelerate and catch up with
itself three minutes? Can such things be? Expert watchmakers say no;
but I say that they have never done any expert watch-making and
watch-rating in the Solomons. That it is the climate is my only
diagnosis. At any rate, I have successfully doctored the chronometer,
even if I have failed with the lunacy cases and with Martin’s yaws.

P.S. Martin has just tried burnt alum, and is blessing the Solomons
more fervently than ever.

P.S. Between Manning Straits and Pavuvu Islands.

Henry has developed rheumatism in his back, ten skins have peeled off
my hands and the eleventh is now peeling, while Tehei is more lunatic
than ever and day and night prays God not to kill him. Also, Nakata and
I are slashing away at fever again. And finally up to date, Nakata last
evening had an attack of ptomaine poisoning, and we spent half the
night pulling him through.




BACKWORD


The _Snark_ was forty-three feet on the water-line and fifty-five over
all, with fifteen feet beam (tumble-home sides) and seven feet eight
inches draught. She was ketch-rigged, carrying flying-jib, jib,
fore-staysail, main-sail, mizzen, and spinnaker. There were six feet of
head-room below, and she was crown-decked and flush-decked. There were
four alleged _water-tight_ compartments. A seventy-horse power
auxiliary gas-engine sporadically furnished locomotion at an
approximate cost of twenty dollars per mile. A five-horse power engine
ran the pumps when it was in order, and on two occasions proved capable
of furnishing juice for the search-light. The storage batteries worked
four or five times in the course of two years. The fourteen-foot launch
was rumoured to work at times, but it invariably broke down whenever I
stepped on board.

But the _Snark_ sailed. It was the only way she could get anywhere. She
sailed for two years, and never touched rock, reef, nor shoal. She had
no inside ballast, her iron keel weighed five tons, but her deep
draught and high freeboard made her very stiff. Caught under full sail
in tropic squalls, she buried her rail and deck many times, but
stubbornly refused to turn turtle. She steered easily, and she could
run day and night, without steering, close-by, full-and-by, and with
the wind abeam. With the wind on her quarter and the sails properly
trimmed, she steered herself within two points, and with the wind
almost astern she required scarcely three points for self-steering.

The _Snark_ was partly built in San Francisco. The morning her iron
keel was to be cast was the morning of the great earthquake. Then came
anarchy. Six months overdue in the building, I sailed the shell of her
to Hawaii to be finished, the engine lashed to the bottom, building
materials lashed on deck. Had I remained in San Francisco for
completion, I’d still be there. As it was, partly built, she cost four
times what she ought to have cost.

The _Snark_ was born unfortunately. She was libelled in San Francisco,
had her cheques protested as fraudulent in Hawaii, and was fined for
breach of quarantine in the Solomons. To save themselves, the
newspapers could not tell the truth about her. When I discharged an
incompetent captain, they said I had beaten him to a pulp. When one
young man returned home to continue at college, it was reported that I
was a regular Wolf Larsen, and that my whole crew had deserted because
I had beaten it to a pulp. In fact the only blow struck on the _Snark_
was when the cook was manhandled by a captain who had shipped with me
under false pretences, and whom I discharged in Fiji. Also, Charmian
and I boxed for exercise; but neither of us was seriously maimed.

The voyage was our idea of a good time. I built the _Snark_ and paid
for it, and for all expenses. I contracted to write thirty-five
thousand words descriptive of the trip for a magazine which was to pay
me the same rate I received for stories written at home. Promptly the
magazine advertised that it was sending me especially around the world
for itself. It was a wealthy magazine. And every man who had business
dealings with the _Snark_ charged three prices because forsooth the
magazine could afford it. Down in the uttermost South Sea isle this
myth obtained, and I paid accordingly. To this day everybody believes
that the magazine paid for everything and that I made a fortune out of
the voyage. It is hard, after such advertising, to hammer it into the
human understanding that the whole voyage was done for the fun of it.

I went to Australia to go into hospital, where I spent five weeks. I
spent five months miserably sick in hotels. The mysterious malady that
afflicted my hands was too much for the Australian specialists. It was
unknown in the literature of medicine. No case like it had ever been
reported. It extended from my hands to my feet so that at times I was
as helpless as a child. On occasion my hands were twice their natural
size, with seven dead and dying skins peeling off at the same time.
There were times when my toe-nails, in twenty-four hours, grew as thick
as they were long. After filing them off, inside another twenty-four
hours they were as thick as before.

The Australian specialists agreed that the malady was non-parasitic,
and that, therefore, it must be nervous. It did not mend, and it was
impossible for me to continue the voyage. The only way I could have
continued it would have been by being lashed in my bunk, for in my
helpless condition, unable to clutch with my hands, I could not have
moved about on a small rolling boat. Also, I said to myself that while
there were many boats and many voyages, I had but one pair of hands and
one set of toe-nails. Still further, I reasoned that in my own climate
of California I had always maintained a stable nervous equilibrium. So
back I came.

Since my return I have completely recovered. And I have found out what
was the matter with me. I encountered a book by Lieutenant-Colonel
Charles E. Woodruff of the United States Army entitled “Effects of
Tropical Light on White Men.” Then I knew. Later, I met Colonel
Woodruff, and learned that he had been similarly afflicted. Himself an
Army surgeon, seventeen Army surgeons sat on his case in the
Philippines, and, like the Australian specialists, confessed themselves
beaten. In brief, I had a strong predisposition toward the
tissue-destructiveness of tropical light. I was being torn to pieces by
the ultra-violet rays just as many experimenters with the X-ray have
been torn to pieces.

In passing, I may mention that among the other afflictions that jointly
compelled the abandonment of the voyage, was one that is variously
called the healthy man’s disease, European Leprosy, and Biblical
Leprosy. Unlike True Leprosy, nothing is known of this mysterious
malady. No doctor has ever claimed a cure for a case of it, though
spontaneous cures are recorded. It comes, they know not how. It is,
they know not what. It goes, they know not why. Without the use of
drugs, merely by living in the wholesome California climate, my silvery
skin vanished. The only hope the doctors had held out to me was a
spontaneous cure, and such a cure was mine.

A last word: the test of the voyage. It is easy enough for me or any
man to say that it was enjoyable. But there is a better witness, the
one woman who made it from beginning to end. In hospital when I broke
the news to Charmian that I must go back to California, the tears
welled into her eyes. For two days she was wrecked and broken by the
knowledge that the happy, happy voyage was abandoned.

Glen Ellen, California,
     _April_ 7, 1911.




FOOTNOTES


[268] To point out that we of the _Snark_ are not a crowd of weaklings,
which might be concluded from our divers afflictions, I quote the
following, which I gleaned verbatim from the _Eugenie’s_ log and which
may be considered as a sample of Solomon Islands cruising:
Ulava, Thursday, March 12, 1908.

Boat went ashore in the morning. Got two loads ivory nut, 4000 copra.
Skipper down with fever.
Ulava, Friday, March 13, 1908.

Buying nuts from bushmen, 1½ ton. Mate and skipper down with fever.
Ulava, Saturday, March 14, 1908.

At noon hove up and proceeded with a very light E.N.E. wind for
Ngora-Ngora. Anchored in 5 fathoms—shell and coral. Mate down with
fever.
Ngora-Ngora, Sunday, March 15, 1908.

At daybreak found that the boy Bagua had died during the night, on
dysentery. He was about 14 days sick. At sunset, big N.W. squall.
(Second anchor ready) Lasting one hour and 30 minutes.
At sea, Monday, March 16, 1908.

Set course for Sikiana at 4 P.M. Wind broke off. Heavy squalls during
the night. Skipper down on dysentery, also one man.
At sea, Tuesday, March 17, 1908.

Skipper and 2 crew down on dysentery. Mate fever.
At sea, Wednesday, March 18, 1908.

Big sea. Lee-rail under water all the time. Ship under reefed mainsail,
staysail, and inner jib. Skipper and 3 men dysentery. Mate fever.
At sea, Thursday, March 19, 1908.

Too thick to see anything. Blowing a gale all the time. Pump plugged up
and bailing with buckets. Skipper and five boys down on dysentery.
At sea, Friday, March 20, 1908.

During night squalls with hurricane force. Skipper and six men down on
dysentery.
At sea, Saturday, March 21, 1908.

Turned back from Sikiana. Squalls all day with heavy rain and sea.
Skipper and best part of crew on dysentery. Mate fever.


And so, day by day, with the majority of all on board prostrated, the
_Eugenie’s_ log goes on. The only variety occurred on March 31, when
the mate came down with dysentery and the skipper was floored by fever.




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